Reflection on the course

When I signed up to take AE 410, I expected it to be more of a designing class that will teach more on how to work with SketchUp and AutoCAD. On the contrary, I learned very new concepts in this course which I think opened my eyes on very new topics for me in my major.

The course focused on Artificial Intelligence, BIM and Databases. Before taking this course, I had a very basic idea on how robots are constructing in big factories, but I did not realize how the robots are also being used in construction fields, and how intelligent they are programmed to overcome obstacles and receive commands for several tasks.

Another topic that I was expecting to learn about in this course and that we went through and understood very well was 3D printed buildings. Before taking this course, I really wanted to learn more about the 3D printed buildings advantages, how they are constructed and put together and whether they are used nowadays or are still being developed. We understood it very well from professor Mitchell’s explanation, and my peers’ blogs that introduced new information and have taught me a lot.

Reflection on my professional career and future:

I believe that AI plays a huge role in BIM, and have been and developing the industry in so many aspects. My plan now is to go back to Kuwait after I graduate and hopefully work in one of the Architectural firms. I am very sure that they use BIM and such developed technologies. I also know that in Dubai they are relying on 3D printed buildings, Kuwait work on many projects with Dubai as well as exchanging experiences, so hopefully after learning so much about the 3D printed buildings I can have a hand on one of the projects which I am very excited for.

Another useful tool we used was Microsoft Access creating Databases. Even though I faced few trouble and errors on the assignments, I have a clear idea on Queries and relationships which I really believe I would benefit from it in my professional career. I also learned very much about sensors which I didn’t have a clear background about before this class.

One of the most effective things in this course were the guest speakers that use what we are learning in their daily work. That showed me how important all the topics we learned are and gave me a push to read more about everything and, I was always interested in reading my classmate’s blogs to learn new aspects of the topic.

In conclusion, the class was much deeper in the topics than I anticipated it to be and very useful to me, my major and in my future career for sure. I believe that professor Mitchell’s useful presentation and videos were very helpful. The videos that were showed to us in class, especially the robots working on construction and overcoming obstacles to do specific tasks, in addition to the blogs and guest speakers were very helpful and taught us a lot. The course was very interesting, we had so much fun while learning the new topics, and hopefully we can use all that we learned in our future jobs.

Response to peers
Nick Pawlikowski : It is great that you knew about most of the topics in this course. To me even though I knew few topics, I was not familiar with the great deep information provided in the lectures and blogs by our colleagues. I as well had never worked on Databases and I enjoyed it and like working on it this course I really think it helped me a lot.

Joe Dressel : I agree with most of what you said about the course. I strongly agree that the guest speakers were very helpful, they brought us a lot of prospective as you said and shared their experience on the topics which helped us very much.

Ronald Herazo: I strongly agree that professor Mitchell did a great job teaching this course and really helped us a lot and made it so much fun for us. Most of the topics even though we had a basic idea about, deep information were shared, reading the blog posts helped introduce more information and finally the guest speakers also sharing their experience gave us the best idea possible. 

B4 - Term Project - Arthur McCloskey

In my term project, I will be working with Egla Qori to create a comprehensive set of structural families for use in Revit.  In particular, we will be focusing our effort on creating families of typical components of Reinforced Concrete Building Design, including beams, columns, caissons, slabs, drop panels, and varying types of each.

The reason we selected this project was so that we may use the families we create in our Senior Design Project.  Our Senior Design Project is the structural design of a 40-story hotel in Chicago, IL, for which we have the actual architectural plan set.  It was determined in fall term that we would pursue a reinforced concrete frame structural system.  While Revit has a preexisting collection of structural families, including almost all of the above components, we hope to include the possibility of reinforcement detailing within the families, as well as including any post-tensioning that may be required.  As of right now, it appears Revit only has the ability to specify reinforcement spacing and bar size. [1]  We hope to be able to include these in the model, and just export to a schedule.

The idea of “Intelligent Buildings” has a lot to do with Revit and streamlining the modeling process.  The most challenging part of reinforced concrete design is the placement and sizing of reinforcement and post-tensioning.  Revit has been attempting to make modeling more object oriented, but still has to rely on geometric and tabulation to handle certain components.  We believe that creating these families will make the modeling process easier for our Senior Design Project, and the structural plans will be easily generated from the whole model.

The biggest challenges we will face are in the creation of the families themselves.  After the first assignment, we have some experience in creating families, but that was a very simple example, with only geometric constraints.  We plan to be able to assign structural properties and detailing within the objects themselves, which poses a challenge when considering how many permutations of reinforcement spacing and post-tensioning stress.  Also, considering how large the building we are designing is, there are likely going to be many types per family, so it is a challenge just to design that many types and making sure they are all correctly created.

Comments on Others

Andy Dinh – Your project seems similar to mine, since you are also creating families in Revit and Bentley to compare the two software.  I think it will be interesting to see which program is easier for this, and I would be interested to see if there are any advantages to using Bentley for different system families (structures, HVAC, etc.).

Kerieanne Vogler – Your project seems really interesting because I feel like the life cycle analysis of buildings is not something that we like to think of as designers.  I’m actually taking a LCA class next term and would be interested in seeing how BIM could help make that easier, because from what I remember from other classes, LCA is really difficult.

Nick Pawlikowski – This project is really interesting because it seems to combine all the major themes we are studying in this class: databases, BIM, programming.  I think the idea for programmatically generating Revit families would be such a great functionality, and I’m excited to see if it works out!

References

[1]  Wikispaces.  “Introduction to Revit Structure Families.”  Web.  Available: http://bim.wikispaces.com/file/view/Introduction+to+Revit+Structure+Families.pdf

Alexander Koo - Assignment B4 - A-Team

Virtual Reality in Jobsites

 

Project Description and Why is was chosen:

I will be working on a project, along with my teammates Andrew Ng and Taryn Francischetti, based on the concept of Virtual Reality on construction sites. Virtual has completely revolutionise society and the construction industry and is still in the process of reaching its full potential. VR Technologies, however, are still lagging behind the visions that people have for their use, especially for their use on construction purposes. [1] It is known that VR greatly improved the design and building process. One example is the ability to test a number of factors in order to reduce the number of errors that will be present in the completed building. 

The paper will focus on how Virtual reality technologies can already and will impact jobsites. I chose this project since I truly believe VR technologies will benefit the construction at a greater scale than we think. According to Peeter Nieler (Investing Into Virtual Reality: Making Sense Of It All, CoFounder Magazine, Spring 2016) there are 419 Virtual Reality startups, 149 of which are within the European Union. Nieler points out that the official number is heavily underestimated. [1] This really shows how the market for VR exploded. 

Relation to IB:

I believe Intelligent Building and Virtual Reality are two main themes and affect each other indirectly. Intelligent building involve an integrative approach. Virtual reality allows that approach and also provides the team a platform to more easily and efficiently, input their ideas and concepts into play. For example, through the use of UNITY, a virtual technology, bringing Revit/3D models into a virtual reality space becomes much more efficient. Now, any AEC professional can take their Revit model, bring it into Unity, and create a VR experience. With a bit of programming knowledge, the VR models can also be heavily customized. This powerful, intuitive and flexible tool ensures rapid iteration and fluid workflow, thus allowing engineers and architects to create stunning, interactive walkthroughs and provide clients with a realistic sense of how it would feel like to actually live in the simulated environment. [2]

Challenges:

“Virtual reality on Jobsites” is a broad topic. The paper will need to target specific topics. The use of VR technologies is a relatively new concept which just started to bloom. Therefore, the presence of up-to-date information might be scarce. A lot of research on emerging VR technologies and concept will have to be made.  Even though it is impossible to tell when the use of VR technologies in construction will become the norm, it is obvious that it is only a matter of time before it does. 

References:

[1] https://aec-business.com/virtual-reality-construction/

[2] https://www.viatechnik.com/resources/50-virtual-reality-technologies-in-architecture-engineering-and-construction/

 

Comments:

Nick Pawlikowski – It seems like a very interesting project. The BIM assignment for the class really open my eyes on the concept of families, how they are created and put in use with a model. I am interested in seeing how Microsoft Access will work in order to houses the parameters data. The function to generate families could come in useful for the class afterwards and even your personal projects. I am very curious as to how the project will turn out. Post: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/project-description-why-it-was-chosen.html

Joseph Chaudhari – Robotic Surveying is a huge concept nowadays that is still developing. The use of robot to survey is nowhere near the expectations of the society. However, it is interesting to learn about how the integration of robotics surveying could be sped up. Your topic could relate to mine, “Virtual Reality in Jobsites”, since both our topics are about construction sites and how modern technologies will affect the different processes and overall experience. Your challenges are also similar to mine since both our topics are about relatively new technologies. Post: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/chaudhari-b4-team-project.html

Maria Raggousis – Your topic “Emerging Technologies in the Robotic Assembly and Construction of Buildings” looks very promising. It is true that robotics is already widely used nowadays but very little is known about how the technology behind it and how it is going to evolve throughout the years. It is indeed a very broad subject and your team will need to specify clearly your topics clearly. Your project is similar in some ways to Joseph Chaudhari’s one. I am looking forward to learning more about your project. Post: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/assignment-b4-group-b-maria-raggousis.html

Revit/Bentley Architecture Comparison

Revit/Bentley Architecture

For our comparison experiment between the Revit and Bentley Architecture software, we decided, as a team, to design a 1-story residential building, containing a handful of components, such as doors, windows, and families that will be designed by ourselves, such as chairs, tables, and sofas. Our goal for this project is to create a complete building model in Revit, and transfer all of its data to Bentley Architecture. We want to see if Bentley will accept the whole model. If it comes out differently in Revit, we are to take note of its key differences such as similarities, what got accepted and what got rejected during the transfer and why, and any of the model that got altered in any way that ranges from walls to the very detail of any component.

By the end of this term, I would like to receive moderate experience working with Bentley Architecture and see the flow of transfering models to Revit. This will give me collaboration experience as well, because I believe in firms, contractors and designers will use either of these 2 BIM software or perhaps both, which means transferring data between the 2 softwares could be more difficult. If I can determine the relationship between the two BIM software, it would go a long way for me to become fluent with today's BIM.

Challenges

The Bentley system would slightly be more complicated than the Revit software, but in my opinion, wouldn't be too challenging. However, the major concern would be the data transfer. As I looked into several tutorial videos, transferring data from Revit and Bentley would overall be easy, but the model would not be 100% same on the other side. Differences could be as huge as a different roof or wall, to the smallest detail of change in width or length by an inch. There is never any guarentee the two models in both softwares will result in the same, as both softwares were made from two different companies. This challenge is critical to the future of BIM modelling.


References

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2A8A1C3167E4A4E6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfMt5IThYdU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEtQNnChG74

Comments

Alsaleem (link) - I really like how you compared AI in relation to Intelligent Buildings. AI needs to be taken seriously because it is becoming more of a reality each day further rather than just a mere dream. But it will be a huge step in the engineering world. Also leading to robotics, it will help shape the industrial world in the next century with faster processing.

Maissoun (link) - To me, Intelligent building would be same as Green building. To achieve sustainability in a building, it would have to technology that can help reduce energy consumption, have a positive enviornmental impact, and still make lives easier for people. Green and Intelligent are basically two sides of the same coin. Achieving sustainability would require advanced technology to build clean resources, normally not available to regular houses.

Sarah (link) - AI would be very important to the future of construction for buildings and bridges. I like how you explained the benefit of AI inspections. It can have many benefits, but it would overall require a hired staff member or 2 to check that inspection. Leaving inspections to just the AI would be time saving, but also very risky. If there was any problem the AI did not detect, and the inspector never saw it for himself/herself, it would compromise the whole project.

BIM Project - Week 4 Post

BIM Project – Brandon Mengel

Loadable Family

For my project, my goal is to create a set of cabinet families for a custom kitchen in Revit.  By the end of the project I hope to have completed a customizable kitchen island, standard kitchen cabinets, and overhanging cabinets that hopefully can all link together nicely in one room.  These cabinets will all come standard with a countertop of choice material and for the overhanging cabinets possibly under lighting.  My biggest problem I foresee is my time, from my experience with Revit I know that this program is very engaging and can suck all your time without you even noticing.  As I have very little experience with families, I hope that my goal for this project isn’t too time intensive, I really enjoy Revit but the time frame we have for this project isn’t even close to infinite.  As it relates to BIM, well this is BIM.  Families are what make up Revit and the ability to grow my skills with families will further grow my BIM abilities.

            After completing the very simple bookshelf I have some confidence in this project but still have various questions that I didn’t explore while completing the bookshelf such as materials.  I noticed that when I changed the materials of my bookcase that the whole type changed with it so if I were to have a countertop on my cupboard will that have to be a separate family imported into the cupboard family?  Likewise, I have not explored into the lighting side of families and am curious to see how the addition of lighting will affect the hanging cabinets.  I’m not even totally sure if that’s possible to do.  My final question that will be explored is how inserting a kitchen sink might work into this. 

            For this project it was suggested to me (by Dr. Mitchell) to keep a journal of my progress and problems I encounter with my counters ;)  while foregoing this project so that will be my first step.  Next to start this project I will begin with the standard kitchen cabinet and then test to see how the materials work to see if I need to create a separate countertop family.  I predict I will, but only time will tell.  By the time I finish the first family (both countertop and cabinet) I will move onto the hanging cabinets.  By this time I should have gotten pretty comfortable on how to generate a family and the lighting part should be simple.  In case of problems, I will definitely use YouTube as my guide.  Providing I have time, I hope to make a simple island, which will ultimately be just a larger standard cabinet/ countertop with the use of stools.  These will then get imported into a Revit project file to show off their design and capabilities. The necessary schedules and dimensions will be provided as requested by the grading criteria.

Below are some video links I may use or watch before I start this project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai_DXIuUSIs&list=PLd7E80oDUYqO6FfI3zBY_5tEBPy3RerMu&index=16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGPCJS4wgyk&list=PLd7E80oDUYqO6FfI3zBY_5tEBPy3RerMu&index=17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUZBdb7ZgCc

Maria R
I think your project sounds very interesting!  I'm also curious about all the robotics out there.  There are probably so many companies developing and tinkering with new ideas all the time.  I wouldn't doubt that you might find yourself tons and tons of articles on different robotics in construction.  Just a quick google search allowed me to find a company called construction robotics.  They've developed a brick laying robot that appears different from what we saw in class and more of an automated arm robot similar to the car factory robots.  Anyway wish you the best of luck and I look forward to your presentation.
http://www.construction-robotics.com/portfolio-items/pvbshowroom/#


Peter D
Looking forward to your presentation to see what you have come up with.  Personally I have to disagree with you, I'm not looking forward to the implementation of AI.  Like the video said "what will we do once AI takes over?"  That is a huge question and one that made me really think because with out a job theres no money.  So are we just going to get rid of money or are the few select people who invented AI going to run the world?  All this kind of scares me and i hope you find that it is further away than many believe.  Also I feel like I have a different idea of AI than everyone, when i think of AI I think of fully functional and able to think and act on its own not be programmed to do one single job, more like an android, at least thats what i've been taught.  The AI we've talked about are just "smart" programs that have a set list of tasks/ responses they can perform.  They can't think on their own, they still need a human to tell them to do it.

Ronald H
I also saw the 3D surveying being used for my lasts job and i was pretty curious on the possibilities in which it could be used.  I'd like to know how fast this equipment takes and about the average cost of something like that.  Currently I do believe that they do relatively take a long time to produce the full image and obviously you'd have to take many "pictures" (what do they even call the pictures it takes?) for a whole site but I hope you clarify this information in your presentation.  Lastly i'm curious as to how they recognize color?  It sounds like you have a very interesting project and I have many questions that i hope you answer later on.