July 2013 Meeting Notes

Attendees: Elizabeth Ashley, Dave Bleiman, Mario Guttman, Bruce Madsen, Karen Thomas, Marla Ushijima, Willard Williams

Collaboration via email vs. Google docs, which has real-time collaboration and version tracking.

Digital security is problematic. Comic examples include the witness in the George Zimmerman trial who testified via Skype but forgot to hide his email address, so was interrupted repeatedly by random people calling him; and a recent scandal in Japan when a ministry official used Google Docs for  sensitive material, with incorrect privacy settings. Various AE firms get hacked seemingly at random; one firm was hacked for extortion and called in the FBI. It's basically whack-a-mole to protect your firewall. The most secure form of digital data transmission remains the fax machine, which is why financial institutions and government agencies still use it.

General discussion on the Bay Bridge troubles. TY Lin is supposedly horrified; that it's a monument to stupidity. Is the fundamental nature flawed? Falsework is required during construction; it's not self-supporting during construction (as opposed to traditional suspension bridges). Catastrophic collapse would result in greater loss of life; modular nature of the old bridge would limit extent of damage.

Some structural engineers are frustrated/disillusioned with how BIM is used. They tend to feel that data is the most important aspect, not the physical representation; whereas architects are less interested in things "behind the paint." (Inflammatory statement noted and decried ;) Data remains a challenge to manage. ArchiCAD was previously notoriously bad at it, but has reportedly gotten much better of late. Onuma remains a leader in data aspects of BIM.

June 2013

Attendees: Alexandra Fenton Bergin, Michael Bergin, Dave Bleiman, Mario Guttman, Bruce Madsen, Danny Polkinhorn, Wafaa Sabil, Karen Thomas, Marla Ushijima, Willard Williams

1. Grasshopper - design as a parametric process
2. Building Analytics:
• mining data from the BIM
• QC - BIM auditing firm-wide
• strategic planning
3. Simulation/daylight studies: work by architects usually for LEED, lightweight; real analysis by consultants
4. CASE recently did a project to develop a firm-wide content library pulled from content already existing in the firm's projects. They found 20,000 families with over 645,000 instances. They used Microsoft Access to mine views and nested families, prioritizing the most-used families.
5. Would it be feasible to cross-reference and index families across all projects to view them in their native context?
6. Key issue with content libraries is who's reviewing the information?
7. "We have tools to pull data; we need tools to understand it." We need better tools for visualizing data.
8. BIM still used mostly for geometry clash detection and 2D drawings, which is an evolutionary dead-end. The end client will be builders and subs for fabrication. Evolution is coming from both ends, but subs throw out design models because designers don't know what's needed for construction purposes. It remains that models are built for different purposes which are not always compatible.
9. Why do firms hire consultants for I.T. development?
• They tend not to trust their in-house experts or want to get a fresh perspective.
• Value of consultants is NOT to come in and tell people what to do; they must help get work or do work/be more productive, such as creating specialized tools.
• Viewpoint of upper management is to brand firm as being ahead of the curve, to help win work.
10. What will our profession look like in 20-30 years?
• either be gone or much different?
• next generation will not be producing drawings, they'll be producing data
• design/build?

May 2013

Attendees: Dave Bleiman, Karen Thomas, Marla Ushijima

Major Topics:

Use of ipads, personal vs. company property. 16GB sufficient for business; individuals might want to upgrade. Wifi vs. cellular data/tether? - perhaps only principals, or in the field. Who pays for the data? Monthly stipend?

Lots of good apps out now. We shared some favorites:

• Penultimate for sketching
• Notability for recording mixed media notes - typed, audio, sketch
• Dropbox
• Sharefile
• iAnnotate
• Keynote
• Bluebeam

Rutherford & Chekene uses pdfs on ipads for marketing. Can be shown either on the tablet itself or connected to a larger display or projector.

April 2013

Attendees: Dave Bleiman, Catherine Chan,
Craig Goings, Bruce Madsen, Karen Thomas, Dan Tsui, Marla Ushijima

Major Topics:
Newforma
File sharing

March 2013

Attendees: Luis Buenfil, Bruce Madsen, Guillaume Miara, Sheena Shook, Karen Thomas, Marla Ushijima

Major topics of discussion:

BIM strategy services offered by small, agile consultants (such as Case, Ant Group, Ecodomus, Kimon Onuma) to design firms and owners.

Cobie data: clients hear about it and want it, but client project managers don't want to pay for it.

Particular software is less critical than the process it facilitates.

There's a lack of consistency among firms on BIM deliverables. Everyone in the industry has a duty to push standards forward. BIM makes it more critical.

Contract language is for BIM is critical. Project managers are wary because they're on the hook for money and schedule.

UC Berkeley offers no interdisciplinary training and no Revit. Schools that don't produce good interns with useful skills will drop off. Mentorship is crucial. SF AIA mentorship program offers 360º, cross-firm mentoring connections.

Writing up meeting minutes can be facilitated by audio recording. There's an ipad app that records audio with bookmarks that are tagged to typed notes. Transcription is difficult due to background noise typically present; pretty much has to be done by humans.

February 2013

Attendees: Dave Bleiman, Eric Davis, David Green, Mario Guttman, Mike Hilliard, James MacKenzie, Bruce Madsen, Nancy McClure, Kim Pipkin, Tony Rinella, Adhamina Rodriguez, Gina Siciliano, Madigan Talmadge-Bowers, Vidhya Thyagarajin, Dan Tsui, Marla Ushijima, Glen Walson

 
James McKenzie of Swinerton hosted at Swinerton's offices (thanks, great conference room!), and led a lively discussion on BIM workflow between designers and builders. He drew from his related presentations at Autodesk University on project delivery and best practices for construction data extraction from Revit.

December 2012

Attendees: Dave Bleiman, Luis Buenfil, Bruce Madsen, Dan Tsui, Marla Ushijima

Topics of discussion:

Bruce decried the inconsistency of Revit family naming and expressed a wish for an industry standard. He mentioned the standards for plumbing families developed by ATS.

Dan brought up the database he's creating in SQLite (for his girlfriend's recipe collection).

Python was mentioned as an "awesome, easy, fast" database alternative. Luis says that Python integrates into Revit, and provides integration between Revit and several other programs such as Rhino, Vasari, and 3D Studio. It's open source and offers a graphical interface. It can be used as a front-end for creating geometry from a project program; and multi-variable input facilitates analysis and design optimization.

Luis told us about the flying motorcycles and cage match at the AU keynote speech (!). The main talking points at AU, and the evident direction in which Autodesk is investing, is in cloud computing and mobile solutions, such as visualization in the field on a ipad.

Dave brought up Turkey. Ground displacement in the recent earthquake was 3-4 meters. He mentions that the banking system was isolated from the Lehman Bros. disaster and the economy is fairly healthy. There's a nation-wide push for hospital construction, seismic retrofit and base isolation. Mock-ups of O.R.'s are not economically viable; virtual simulation would be a good substitute.

Virtual simulation benefits from development in the gaming industry (since that's where the money is). Game engines can handle the geometry much better than Revit for smooth, fast walk-throughs. Dan describes a work flow of .rvt file > .3ds > Unity game engine (which is free!). Then that can be run on a desktop, laptop, or ipad to glasses with two screens that cover the eyes; and a helmet with a gyroscope that tracks head movement. Dan mentions that an iphone taped to a hat would alternately serve that function. The model moves as the person looks around and up/down. SmartBIM is apparently backing development of visualization using Unity.

Bruce likens Revit walk-throughs to "packing an elephant into a Volkswagon." There needs to be a converter to simplify the geometry and proximity triggers to select alternate levels of detail for quick walk-throughs. He thinks this needs to be done by a person, as it requires a judgement call. There's a lot of ambiguity that's not handled well by computers.

We ended with a discussion debating the value proposition of paying tuition at current rates to get an MBA.