Joseph Chaudhari B5 A Group

Joseph Chaudhari (A Group)

Dr. Mitchell

Blog Post B5

15 February 2017

Topics Discussed: Relational Database Theory

              What is a relational database? It is a digital database that is organizationally based on Codd’s relational model of data. This model was developed in 1970. The software systems that are typically used to maintain relational databases are known as RDBMS or “relational database management systems” that make use of SQL or “structured query language”. A relational database can consist of tables that are linked together in some way that benefits the user or the overall purpose of the database’s creation [1]. Relational databases consist of tables which have uniquely labelled rows and columns. As fore-mentioned, tables within the relational database are connected by “relationships”. A relationship is created using something called a “key” which contains fields (one or many) that identify a piece of data or “record”. There are two types of keys that link data together in the database. They are primary, composite, and foreign keys. A primary key is a minimal set of fields that identify a record in a table. A composite key is a key in which a combination of multiple characteristics is needed to identify a record. Thus, a composite key is made up of multiple attributes [1]. A foreign key is a field having data inputs that are the same as another table’s primary key.

           

               As computers grow stronger by means of technological improvement and Moore’s Law, their role in gathering, organizing, and interpreting data will only grow. A prime example of computers starting to take the primary role in database management is in paleo-biology [3]. As mentioned in the article, a computer program or software called PaleoDeepDive was developed for the purpose of extracting data from scientific publications and then placing it, the collected data, in a massive unique database. In fact, this program has equaled scientists in this difficult and tedious task of scientific publication data detection and compilation [3]. As seen in prior examples of technologies outpacing humans in speed and efficiency regarding random and unique tasks, one could imagine that this program, and others like it, will soon be surpassing humans in data management. Possibly the most significant advantage that this program and its created database provides is the ability to assess information, present and incoming, in its database [3]. If it were not for this program, a scientist might have to spend minutes or hours reading original files or texts to find what he or she is seeking to evaluate.

              A large step in database evolution may be seen very soon in the form of HP’s (Hewlett-Packard) new computer architecture which will be much simpler and faster according to a presentation given at Columbia University by Martin Fink. How will this effect databases? Aside from improve power, less energy usage, and more storage, HP’s new computers will be switching from current relational databases that make use of indexing and data flushing to a smarter database system known as graph databases [2]. Graph databases work by having a program look for means of optimizing data available to address the problem or task at hand.

             

References:

1.       "Chapter 9, Lesson 5." What Is a Relational Database? - Elements, Design & Advantages. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

2.       Hewlitt Packard. "Evernote Shared Notebook:." Evernote. Evernote, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2017. <https://www.evernote.com/pub/aengineer/ae-510#st=p&x=Relational%2520Database%2520theory&n=a65ea59a-7fcc-4606-828a-ed6cd16b9062>.

3.       Kurzweil. "Evernote Shared Notebook:." Evernote. Evernote, 2 Dec. 2014. Web. 14 Feb. 2017. <https://www.evernote.com/pub/aengineer/ae-510#st=p&x=Relational%2520Database%2520theory&n=0d3e27e7-2473-478d-abc3-c0253088d4aa>.

Comments:

1.       Mridul Pareek: Where would companies be without databases? Work-place productivity would be destroyed if this was our current world situation. In design offices, although I have never worked in one, databases (like dropbox) are quiet ways of keeping everyone in the office up to date on projects and timelines.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b5-uses-of-database-in-design-offices.html

2.       Abdullatif Alkandari: ODBMS is just about how all civil/architectural (and other fields of engineering) projects get completed. Take Revit for example. It is used in nearly all building construction projects in the United States and is always evolving. I agree that a major downside to Object-Oriented Database Management Systems is the fact that user experience can often be frustrating if the program is running slowly or the user simply hasn’t enough experience using the software.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b5-abdullatif-alkandari-groupc.html

3.       Chris Sager: Data does indeed come in all forms such as text, images, or soundwaves. It would be interesting to see how SQL evolves on a yearly basis when compared to the entire relational database. How large of an impact would SQL evolving at a rate similar to or greater than relational databases impact the performance of databases?

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b5-post-sql-chris-sager.html

Chaudhari-B4-A Team-Project

Joseph Chaudhari

Dr. James Mitchell

AE-510

7 February 2017

B4: Why did I chose my project topic? How is it related to Intelligent Buildings? Challenges?

The topic my team and I agreed upon doing a research project/paper about was “Robotics Automating Construction Site Surveying”. We, myself, Ronald Herazo, and Zhijing Zheng, chose this topic because we felt this will/could speed up and better the entire process of site development and construction of proposed structure. Robotic surveying systems are in place in today’s surveying world; however, it is rare, as they are enormously expensive, to find a surveying system that can scan an entire area and create a three-dimensional, not two-dimensional (that already exists), product for surveyors, designers, and engineers to look at. This three-dimensional product that would be produced by the surveying system would be done so by means of infrared scanners, and if need be an ultrasonic-like means of detection, and would save crucial time in the design process of construction sites and buildings (both on the interior and exterior). Think about it, if you were able to look at a three-dimensional model of a room or construction site wouldn’t you have way less questions for the surveyors or folks who sent this model to you opposed to a two-dimensional model. Design errors and hick-ups would come down immensely. A mobile version of this three-dimensional surveying equipment could cut even more time out of the design process of a structure; although, this system would have to be extraordinarily dynamic and thus be extremely expensive (we talk about one of these mobile systems in our abstract).

How is our project topic, robotic surveying systems on construction sites, related to intelligent buildings? Two large links connect our project to IB. One of these links is the idea of big data. With three-dimensional scanning an entire desired area can be accounted for. Once a model of this area is created via infrared 3D surveying technology, it can be used in almost all phases of design. To go a step further, if/when the 3D model is uploaded to design software like Revit, it can be accessed by, hypothetically, all parties involved in the construction of the structure. Once each party involved in the construction process have access to the model, they can then update and easily ask questions about the model if they fail to understand or are unclear on something. Not only would the creation and uploading of a three-dimensional model (created by robotic surveying equipment most likely using infrared scanners and sensors) shorten meeting and project discussion time but its creation would also creative closer links between different parties in the construction process as they would, ideally, all be collaborating on the same model. The other link our project has to IB would be the push our project has towards incorporating artificial intelligence on the construction site via robotic survey systems (more advanced and independent than the ones we already see on sites). As AI keeps creeping into construction sites, well see faster projects and, if the AI is programmed well enough, more efficient/ safer projects. Will AI lead to job loss? Sure, change in industry always leaves some without jobs. However, robotic surveying systems could be advantageous to companies that can afford to buy them and still maintain their staff numbers as the new robotic (AI based) systems could lead to less folk needed per job, thus giving the company the opportunity to seek out more work and bring in more money.

Challenges with this project idea? Challenges are around every corner and range from human error and ignorance to malfunction of robotic systems to acts of nature where systems are destroyed by water (I’ve seen surveying systems disappear over a matter of hours in the North-west Indian monsoon season around July-August) or animals (in western Gujarat, where wild lions and jaguars roam, construction can stop entirely if the animals decide they want to “take over” the site; you can’t say no to a pack of 12 lions). Sensors will be an issue too as they are often small and easily broken. One of the largest issues will be costs. Some of these mobile robotic surveying systems which can be strapped to the top of a truck can cost upwards of 150K.

References:

1.       Almega Geosystems. Video Demo Leica Pegasus: Two. N.p.: YouTube, n.d. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pBLRnseIuQ&t=256s>.

2.       Autodeskrecap. "3D Laser Scanning Made Easy with Autodesk ReCap 360 Ultimate." YouTube. YouTube, 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

Comments:

Ksara/Hovey: I’m glad you confirmed that a green building is not the same thing as an intelligent building. I think an interesting side of green buildings vs. intelligent buildings that your project could shine some light on would be how these two different types of building design affect the ability of a building to become the other (go from green to IB or vice versa). I hope you include some ways of pacifying the dread some owners may have of owning/building green or intelligent buildings (does the government offer any tax breaks on buildings that are green or intelligent?)

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/blog-post-4-ksara-hovey.html

Selden: This project is going to be awesome. I would love to live/design entirely intelligent or “smart” homes. Sensors will definitely play an instrumental role in achieving this type of housing. I would love to see your project include a small blip about how these new smart design home could then have/generate a state/nation/world-wide structural health monitoring database for all house designs of the same scope. This could be huge in sharing deficiency related data and keeping a real-time eye on the health of all of these structures.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/selden-b4-homes-and-artificial.html

Dannemann: I like the fact that you brought up source reliability. As I am not the best coder nor a robotics engineer, how do I know if my sources relating to AI are any good (obviously we can make a pretty good determination on most sources)? Assessing cost may of pieces of AI-run equipment may also prove to be difficult. I have not yet looked directly for the costs of say a 3D surveying system but I know the internet via is not pushing them at you trying to get you to buy them. Ease of use will be tough to assess because it may be impossible to actually test a system your project deals with out and every user will have a different learning curving when it comes to AI powered systems.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b4-group-c-peter-dannemann.html

Assignment B4 - Group A - Ronald Herazo

B4 - Ronald Herazo

Robotics Automating Construction Site Surveying

I will be working with Zhijing Zheng and Joseph Chaudhari in this project. Surveying is the technique and science of determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points as well as the distance and angles between them. In this particular project, we want to focus on how robotics can be used in surveying, how this feature can be improved, and how important is having a well-engineered device in surveying. Back in time, surveyors had a difficult time trying to do topography in the woods and streets. Nowadays, surveyors have the privilege to use Trible S6 and Leica TS06 instruments. Both instruments have one-man mode, which allows the user to work alone and collect the data without having any issues. In addition, we will highly discuss all the features that new surveying instruments provide; this includes: 3D scanning, one-man set up, and reading coordinates from raw files.

This particular topic was selected because surveying is the first thing you need to do in every project. In other words, if you do not collect enough information from the site or if you do not have the adequate instruments, the company won’t be able to do anything with the data. Another thing that caught our attention was the 3D laser scanning instruments. I had the chance to see these instruments during my last CO-OP, and it is very interesting how they are capable to storage a huge amount of data. We also want to look deeper on these instruments in order to understand all their functionalities. I believe after investigating their functionalities, we can see what possible changes could be made in these instruments regarding their robotic performance.

The relation to intelligent building is more with 3D components. Three-dimensional laser scanning instruments can perform three-dimensional views of any structure. This includes internal and external components. Regarding internal components, the instruments can be manually set with coordinates and angles in order to perform a three-dimensional scan inside the building. Having three-dimensional plans, engineers can easily make changes in the design. On the other side, a three-dimensional laser scanning instrument can also be attached to a vehicle. This allows the surveyor to collect all the data around the building faster; drones can also be used in this particular case.

I believe the biggest challenge will be understanding the mathematics behind the surveying instrument. We really want to provide a good understanding of these surveying instruments and how robotics have improved surveying in the past 20 years. Also, we want to add some comments from surveyors that have been working in the field for decades. The purpose of having this information is to see how much surveying has improved in the last two decades.

3D scanning

Indoor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHn2G2Mk3Oc

Outdoor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pBLRnseIuQ&t=256s

Park,

I really want to see how this project ends up. It seems that Revit is not the only software capable of managing 3D structures. I would like to see how many families Bentley Architecture software accepts. Now, you make think about doing the opposite of what you are working on. I believe you can also create a model with Bentley Architecture, and transfer it to Revit, but do you think the result will still be the same? I know these two BIM platforms are totally different from each other, which makes me think about your possible results. I am looking forward to you presentation.

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/revitbentley-architecture-comparison.html

Mengel,

Creating families in Revit is not an easy task. There are a lot of things I want to know about families. I would recommend that you to spend a good time doing this project because as soon as you finish creating families in Revit, and get used to it, you will be able to create more of them even faster. I believe this will be an interesting project. I hope you do not spend a lot of time creating these families, but one thing I know for sure is that you will definitely finish faster than me. It took me a while creating one bookshelf and I would not imagine myself creating another family in Revit. Also, I wonder why did you decide on building a kitchen first? Good luck!!

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/bim-project-week-4-post.html

Dannemann,

When I think about AI I think about Androids. Please, correct me if I am wrong! I really want to see your presentation. I don’t know how much time you are going to spend researching about this specific topic, but good luck with that. There are a lot of things that I want to know about artificial intelligence in construction. First, how will this affect our careers? I think artificial intelligence (Androids) will hurt us in the future plus they cannot think by themselves, you need someone, such as, an engineer, to set up their configuration. Secondly, do we really need AI in construction? I think civil/architecture engineers are the only engineers that get dirty when they are working outside. Also, the weather is not gorgeous every single day. Are they going to be able to walk through the site, take measurements and get wet? I am just curious about your project. I am looking forward to your presentation.

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b4-group-c-peter-dannemann.html

Chaudhari-A Team- Week 3- Future Problems with Revit/BIM

Joseph Chaudhari (A Team)

Week 3 Blog

“What are the possible future problems with Revit/BIM?”

Future problems are potentially many when it comes to software such as Revit or other BIM. As we discussed in week three’s lecture, one major issue that Revit could be posed with as it evolves regards its ability to process large files. As we could only imagine, construction projects will only get bigger, more complex, and more (clean) energy oriented as time progresses. Larger projects will result in more paperwork and project drawings, be they HVAC, geotechnical, or structural (or any of the many more types of drawings), which will require a more advanced version of Revit and a computer with more processing power to entertain the idea of even running a version of Revit that could sustain files of such size. What if Revit cannot handle these big files? What if computer processing power cannot support the advanced versions of Revit that will be needed to enable usage and creation of these large files? If either of these questions have an answer that is negative in manner, then we will be in a great deal of trouble as we will have computers “freezing” or Revit taking quite some time to open and import files. Slow programs, be they Revit or any other BIM, will result in low employee morale and thus a poor workplace environment. I have seen and experienced employees acting in such a way due to technological hindrance and it is not pretty.

The speaker we had this week, week 3, in class mentioned how big of a hassle it is for Revit to update. Dr. Mitchell then elaborated on this saying how it may be very likely that older Revit files, say for a project that took place in 2015, might not be openable on a version of Revit in 2036. This will come into play if a building ever needs maintenance or any services that will require old, original, drawings to be viewed. What will engineers do if they cannot view the original plans that were made for the building. This type of problem can be seen in programs like Microsoft word (where an older file cannot be opened).

Another problem with future Revit lies in the philosophy of “giving a man a fish will feed him for a day, but teaching him how to fish will feed him forever”. What I mean by this is if Revit becomes too user friendly or too simply such that, maybe with the aid of artificial intelligence, an engineer is no longer needed and any user could just punch a few keys or run a few commands and create a completed building ready for construction, we could see ourselves in a world of turmoil. Why would this be bad? Would it not be a good thing if engineers were no longer needed heavily in the design process and a computer with AI could just “do the whole thing”? No, this would be bad in the long run because we could run into situations where computers designing the building are destroyed or the theory I talked about earlier comes true and Revit crashes on a project. Engineers or whoever would be controlling these computers would not know how to read project drawings or determine what goes where on a construction site if the design process became this easy due to an extremely advanced version of Revit or BIM. It would, in a sense, possibly make engineers “weaker” assets to companies as they might not care to know the extra details regarding a building’s drawings if Revit could just take care of everything.

Job loss. Job loss is always an issue as industries and their technologies evolve. Better BIM systems would mean less time being spent on design contracts for projects. Less time spent on individual projects mean more, theoretically, could be accomplished with less. The less I am referring to would be employees. Advancement of BIM could lead to one brand of BIM dominating the other entirely; thus, entire companies could fail, go bankrupt, or be bought by the larger and dominating company [1]. This could result in potential job loss.

Ultimately, I think the benefits future versions or Revit and BIM will bring to the table (as along as Moore’s Law hold relatively true) will greatly outweigh their shortcomings.

References

1.      The Urban Developer. "10 Predictions for the Future of Building Information Modelling (BIM)."TheUrbanDeveloper.com. N.p., 07 July 2016. Web. 26 Jan. 2017.

Responses

Peter Dannemann: Using drones to collect data for geotechnical or surveying data and then importing that data to Revit would be amazing. I have spent a lot of my time in the field surveying and it can get tiresome and it can sometimes be impossible if there is a physical barrier between the surveyor and the Trimble Total Station. I have also spent a lot of time flying drones over the past three years and I think it would be so much easier using a drone (maybe with infrared sensors on it?) to pick up information, help in the surveying process, and convey that information directly to Revit.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/01/b3-group-c-peter-dannemann.html

Maria Raggousis: Revit and other types of BIM technology behaving slowly or freezing is terrible. It can cause employee frustration and lower the effectiveness of an entire office. Even worse, slow or malfunctioning equipment can cause loss of projects, missed deadlines, and loss of money. Thank you for providing the story in your post about how your firm fixed the issues of crashing computer programs. Having multiple version of the same software is a good back-up plan for the worst-case scenarios.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/01/assignment-b3-group-b-maria-raggousis.html

Drew Hovey: I completely agree with you and am glad you up the fact that Revit will indeed be extremely helpful in the future, as it is now, as it evolves. Revit will have its problems, such as freezing or lacking to carry over files from one version of the program to another, but ultimately these small hindrances will be negligible compared to the advantages brought about future versions of Revit (at least I hope so).

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/01/drew-hovey-blog-post-3.html

Term Project - Robots for Construction

Team Members:
Ronald Herazo
Zhijing Zheng
Chaudhari

Robotics

We are interested in researching how robotics apply in construction purposes. We would like to research how robots can improve construction quality and how this feature can help humans in their performance.

Joseph Chaudhari. My definition of Intelligent Building. Week 1.

My coursework background is that of structural, civil, and nuclear engineering as that is what I study here at Drexel. My working background consists of training from all over the place in areas such as: geotechnical engineering, piloting helicopters and drones, and overlanding to name a few. In terms of the relevancy of my background to intelligent buildings, all that comes to mind is my dedication to creating an intelligent waste conversion plant/system in rural India. I run an environmental protection/clean-up company over there and intelligent processes will greatly help me reach my objective of waste removal and thus groundwater table improvement by speeding up processes that would normally take much longer; and, in the long run, intelligent systems could save me money on employee salaries. My expectations of this class are to: further my experience with Revit, other BIM, and database systems and also better understand and gain basic comprehension of how to design intelligent buildings. My definition of an Intelligent Building is a building that can take care of itself. What I mean is that the building can communicate with humans through the right user interface systems and "tell" humans of any issues in any aspect of the building (HVAC, foundation, structural, energy expenditure, etc).

Names Placeholder Post for Labels, Tags

This post creates the first half of the last names of everyone as a label/tag in the class as of 1/4/2017.  I have to add in several posts because it’s limited by Blogger.