Course Reflection - Ziyang Lin

The best words I would use to describe AE410 was remarkable and impactful if someone asks me in the future about the course. The learning experience was great over the ten weeks. The definition of intelligent building was explained very well. Also, the topics of intelligent building were various. We talked about Artificial Intelligence, BIM, 3D Printing, databases, sensors, and networks. Those topics define the future technology not only for the building and construction industry but also for manufacturing and other industries.

The experience of building a database individually was the one I liked the most. Because I had never designed a database, I started the draft database with no prior knowledge. I was confused at the beginning and handed in an organized database. After I got the comments from Professor. Mitchell, I realized what problems a database should solve and how does a database work. I started to research for guides about using Access that was the software I used. I watched through all the basic steps building a simple database. Then I research for information of sensors that I could use for my database. Basically, databases are libraries that organize all different books. We are like the librarians who build a system to easily store, organize and find the books. In the end, I did very well in the final database assignment. This is an introduction for database and I still have a lot to learn. However, the design experience was helpful and meaningful.

The lectures were also helpful, but 3 hours were too long for AE410. A lot of information was covered in every lecture. I usually was very concentrated for the first half of classes. The knowledge I gained in the second half was significantly decreased since it was a long class and evening class. If we have two lectures instead of one lecture every week, the learning efficiency would be higher.

The blog post was also a great tool for students to interact with each other. Reading through other people’s posts I learned a topic from different perspectives. However, I think bi-weekly blog posts would be better than weekly blog posts. 

Comments

Andy Dinh

I had same understanding about the course when I first signed up. I thought AE410 would be all about smart buildings such as how to design a smart building and what are the new technology used in smart buildings. After the first class, I realized that the course was more abroad and expansive. It almost talked about every new and leading-edge technology. I was so lucky to get to know all of them.

Ronald Park

Your reflection is very similar with mine. Did you write your post based on my blog post? The second, the third, and the last paragraphs were too similar with mine.

Joe Dressel

I like that you talked about the guest speakers. I forgot to write about them in my blog post. Their presentations were all great that I also learned different point of view from the industry side. They were from big companies and gave us some big suggestions for us seeking successful careers. There was even a BIM manager who let me know there are many job positions for knowing and studying BIM.

B7 – Course Reflection Samuel Kim

B7 – Course Reflection Samuel Kim

This Intelligent Building course was useful in various ways for me to further explorer different aspects of BIM applications, artificial intelligence and databases. As a senior civil engineering student at Drexel University, I had worked on BIM applications such as AutoCad 3D and SketchUp. By taking this course I was able to use Autodesk’s Revit to build a BIM model which I would not have a chance to practice if I didn’t take this course. Revit is more widely used as BIM applications than AutoCad 3D or SketchUp in the industry and this course had prepared me to further explore and develop my skills of Revit.  

Artificial intelligence is vastly growing in the industry right now. AI reduces physical labors, replicates necessary decisions and it allows virtual connectivity. AI serves for many purposes in like medical applications, digital assistants, Error reduction, daily application, and more. Learning about AI in this course was a huge improvement in my understanding of AI and prediction of how AI will affect the world in the future. Digital assistants like Siri from Apple and Alexa from Amazon are already being used widely by consumers. This type of AI helps from reminding day to day tasks to ordering office supplies by just talking. AI also had its disadvantages. It can lead to more unemployment, it has no improvement with experience, and there is less original creativity. The world will soon rely more on AI and I feel that we need to balance the advantages and disadvantages of AI to guide the AI development into a right direction.

Before taking this course, I had no idea how MS Access is used and what it was for. Learning about databases and doing practices using MS Access was an eye-opening experience for me because databases do so much for us. They allow to reduce overall time using vast amount of information, allows to link data, lets search specific past information quickly, improves data security and more. A Database is used in all most every company to enhance their work optimization. Having a guest to explain us about databases was a enjoyable and informative experience for me as well.

In overall, I learned about BIM, AI, and databases, sensors and other important contents in this course. These topics better prepared me to be ready for my future experiences working as a civil engineer. The contents explored in this course had guided me to find the areas I should focus to learn for my future career as a civil engineer.  

 

SOURCES:

Weil, Michael. "Are Smart Homes Ready For Prime Time In The HVAC Industry?". Contractingbusiness.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 14 Mar. 2017.

"Benefits And Risks Of Artificial Intelligence". Medium. N.p., 2017. Web. 14 Mar. 2017.

Reddy, Krishna. "Advantages and Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence." WiseStep. N.p., 10 Aug. 2016. Web. 14 Mar. 2017.

 

COMMENTS:

Yosep Bak: I also enjoyed having experienced guest speakers to learn about their areas of work. It was interesting and inspiring to hear about the information with real world examples.

Egla Qori: I agree with you that instead of learning one topic in-depth in a course, I liked how this course covered a wide range of topics. This helps me to understand the important concepts in the industry that I was not fully aware of.

Joe Dressel: I also had some difficult time learning the database in this class. I had not prior knowledge about this topic at all in the beginning and I taught myself from the scratch. However, I will keep improving my database skills because I see that I may have to work with it in the future.

B7 Course Reflection Yosep Bak

AE410
B7 - Course Reflection
Yosep Bak
3/14/2016



Starting this class, I thought I was just going to be learning about specifications and more calculation based class. But to my surprise, this class was not about crunching the numbers and memorizing formulas at all. This course was more of an appetizer plate for many of the practical skill sets that aspiring engineers must know, or at least have seen. This class covered many different topics through project and blog post, and although self-research was necessary for the course, proper sources and a large pool of credible information have been given to students. Students were sometimes working in a group to develop a more comprehensive project altogether.

From the projects and assignments, I have acquired many skill sets and information. I was able to learn about different topics of building system development, and I learned mostly about BIM and Green buildings. I was also exposed to databases and sensors from one project which was educational. I enjoyed learning about Microsoft Access because it was simple enough to deliver the concept of database system but complex enough to be applicable in small scale projects. Professor's Evernote Notebook was found to be particularly useful since this is what professor has deemed relevant to the industry. The class was also assigned to create a family in Revit and that assignment was particularly useful because I have first hand witnessed Revit being used at my co-op. Although I was not dealing with modeling Revit, I have seen Revit being used alongside AutoCAD enough to know that being familiar with this software will become useful in the long run.

Guest speakers were also very informative. These speakers were all from the industry and provided the students with a fresh perspective of reality. It is empirical for aspiring engineers to grasp what the difference between textbooks and the industry. Guest speakers efficiently juxtaposed the self-researching aspect that might seem too far fetched for current deployment and kept the class grounded with current standards and applications. I also really appreciated that many of these guest speakers were alumni, and were very open to helping students with anything they can do.


Peer Comments:
Joe Dressel: I am sorry that you did not enjoy the database system. I think that was one of the most unfamiliar assignment we had this term and if it was not for the videos professor posted, I would not have made it at all.

Alexander Koo: I appreciated the BIM assignment as well. That assignment really forced the students to not only produce the result but think like an engineer. I also think that this class is going to benefit me in the long run because although I may not be a professional at BIM or MS Access, at least I have been exposed to the process.

Arthur McCloskey: I am glad that you found the MS access to be useful too. I have seen a whole bunch of comments saying how daunting the process was and even as a digital building concentration, I think managing large data is not appealing to most people.

B7 Course reflection - Mridul Pareek

Going into AE 410 - Intelligent Building, i was expecting a class with coursework related to technologically advanced buildings and taking some of these buildings throughout the term and understanding what made them "intelligent". I was surprised when i found out that the class had more emphasis on what technological advancements in the future will affect the construction industry. It was something i never really thought about as most of the courses i dealt with talked about the current and past issues and teachings.
I enjoyed the class, although i felt like at times the assignments required me to go beyond what was talked about in the class hour itself and educate myself about the topic through the internet or other sources. It is not necessarily a bad thing but it reduces the value of the class hours as they are not really necessary to do the assignments. I still tried my best to attend all the classes as i enjoyed the guest lecturers and video presentations shown in the class.
The three major assignments in this class were BIM, databases and a research paper. I enjoyed the BIM assignments but would have liked it better if we actually got to try some smaller assignment in class which acted as a tutorial instead of going through the video tutorials only. I found the database assignment straightforward and easy to understand. Since the students were allowed to choose their own level of difficulty by choosing the appropriate software as per their skill level, i chose microsoft access which proved to be a good starting point for a database novice such as myself.
Overall, i would say that i personally enjoyed the class, but would have probably enjoyed it more if i had more time available for this class this quarter, since as professor Mitchell put it , the more you put in this class, the more you get out of it.

Peer Comments:

1) Joe Dressel (https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/03/b7-course-reflection_14.html) talked about how the guest speakers bought some professional prospective to students which is a huge deal for students ready to step out and work as professionals. I also agree with his views about actually using Revit instead of focusing on its future potential and uses.

2) Alexander Koo (https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/03/alexander-koo-b7-course-reflection.html) talked about his skepticism with the class at first but how eventually he really came to enjoy it. Like him, i also enjoyed the concepts and technology which could be a huge part of our industry in a few years. Unlike him, i do not think that this course would absolutely be useful to me in the future, but i do believe it may be useful in the future in certain situations.

3) Zhijing Zheng (https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/03/course-reflection-zhijing-zheng.html) talked about how the class opened his eyes to the future potential in structural engineering with AI, Databases and sensors. Although i am not a structural engineer, i can definitely appreciate his excitement for all this potential technology in the construction industry making the construction process faster and more efficient. 

Course Reflection - Andy Dinh

     Signing up for AE410, I was not really sure what to expect. Reading the course title as “Intelligent Buildings” along with the course being offered as an AE course put me in the mindset of the course having to deal with buildings. I never really thought about it in the capacity of dealing with databases and BIM software though. My first thoughts were that we would be dealing with learning about buildings that were efficient in their ways like energy efficiency. While that was true, it was only a small part of what we would learn.

     The different technologies we got to learn about through the course were very expansive. One week we would learn about AI technology, then we went to different BIM software and all their perks, and we even got to look at how databases store wide ranges of information. These of course are only a few topics in the course, but these are the ones that stuck out to me the most from what we learned.

     AI adaptation to helping with the construction process along with maintenance of a building seems to be a technology that could be more practical to have later down the line, but for now seems to be still early in the development process. The ideas that are coming out of it and those in the works are still very interesting though. With clash detection in the different software, along with being able to tell owners or users where deficiencies may be happening within the building itself, AI can have a lot of advantages we currently don’t have as of now. The different BIM software we got to learn about like Revit and Navisworks also expanded my knowledge a bit. Before this course, I only really knew of Revit through limited use of it before in other classes and projects. So, getting a refresher with Revit in our class assignment along with learning about interoperability between the programs was interesting to learn about. Database building was something I never knew about, and it seems so easy to miss since it is not laid out for users unless you specifically look into it. Being able to learn about them along with creating our own databases was very different and I enjoyed it a little, although with more time to work on it I am sure there would have been a lot more we could have covered.

     I can see all of these technologies having great effect on the industry. Being in school as a civil engineer, hopefully in either site/civil or highways/transportation, I can see the advantages of these technologies greatly shifting the landscape in alter years. These changes won’t be reflected immediately in one year, but I can see small changes building up one after the other over time that can change everything form the way we are working on things now. Technology like AI development and database building could be different required fields for people to learn about and are needed for in much larger demand as the technology improves and becomes more user friendly. I look forward to seeing how all of this develops over the next couple of years.

Comments:

Alexander Koo (link) – I agree with your thoughts on the course. Group work did seem big within this course itself. Whether it was small posts that we did together that required a little bit of critical thinking, or to our own projects and presentations we made for the class, we were tasked to work together quite a few times. This is very important for the engineering fields as we will have to work with others on most, if not all, of our future projects. Allowing us to understand the different parts that are involved within the industry does help in understanding how the different parts of a whole work together to get the best product we can have out there.

Arthur McCloskey (link) – The class was a good introduction into the future. Seeing day by day how the technology is evolving around us is great to see. I do hope all of these technologies become advantageous to everyone, not just people in specific practices or fields. Getting to learn about these forward-thinking technologies was a good experience to have as we go on to be a part of the industry.

Sarah Maminski (link) – Being a civil engineer as well, I understand where you are coming from. With what we learned throughout the term, I hope to see all the technologies we learned about to develop with great efficiency for use in the industry. The engineering field always seems to be a little bit behind, so hopefully all the fields can play a little catch with the technology and use them to their full advantages.

B7 - Course Reflection

Course Reflection

I went into this course with some expectations as to what I was going to get out of it. Primarily this was to become familiar with BIM software. While I'm glad that I have been able to walk away with a good understanding of how Revit works, I am also glad that we focused on other things as well. I particularly enjoyed the first few classes where we were able to research and think about ways buildings and building construction can make advances in technology. It was also great to hear other students opinions and read their blog posts. It definitely gave me some things to think about. I also went about thinking about these topics in a personal way. By this, I mean that I went into these assignments focusing on what improvements could be made in the fields that I plan on working in. 

I did like the Revit assignment and the lectures on BIM and how it can be used in the future. I would have liked to spend a little more time on actually using Revit versus talking about how it can be used in the industry. As was pointed out in class, being competent with Revit is a big deal in the job market right now, and if we spent more time on learning Revit, I think it would have made us a little more marketable in when looking for jobs. 

Probably the only part of the class that I did not enjoy was the databases. I think I was able to get a basic understanding of relational databases. I did have a very difficult time trying to figure out how databases might apply to me in the future. I understand that Revit families are part of databases, but failed to see how understanding how relational databases work is of great importance. Perhaps one day in the furture it will all click. 

Lastly, I would like to point out that I really enjoyed our guest speakers. They were able to bring us a perspective of what it currently being used in the industry and where they think it will be going. It is easy to dream big in academia and think that in 20 years everything will be done by robots with AI. Understanding the real world is of great importance and I hope that these speakers come back next term. Overall, I think I got more out of this class that I anticipated, and that is always a good thing.

Peer Comments

Arthur McCloskey - I too am planning on going into the construction management field and I also thought that the presentation by Whiting-Turner was really good. Your point about perhaps using databases to manage equipment or materials on site is a good one which I did not really think about because I have always used Excel to do that type of work.

Sarah Maminski - I was also blown away by some of the technology that was brought up in the first half of the course. I am also excited to part of an industry that may be seeing a lot of change too. I definitely reminds me that I need to be on top of new technology as time goes on.

Paulina Gawor - I can also relate to the way you describe the construction industry you experienced first hand: reluctant to change. I agree that it is exciting to think that this industry may be changing in short oder.