Zen and the Art of Sheet Setup

So, with this impending deadline, I've spent the last 48 hours setting up 70 some sheets as part of our drawing set. Ah, I can hear the virtual envy in your voices. But this has brought about some introspective thinking about how I would approach this time consuming and dramatically in-need-of-automating task:

• Rinse and Repeat - in a central database environment, it should be expected (unless noted otherwise) that a view will end up on a sheet. That being said, even though there have been great strides in making this more efficient, there is still a level of tediousness when setting up 200+ sheets, especially with plan blow-ups, etc.
  
• Think Indesign - Page layout apps have come a long way in the last 10 years, and CAD apps need to make the same strides. 'Heavy' processing of views is just tedious for large projects, wading from view lists to sheets, and easy guide snapping would be a good thing. Seriously.
• Lite is not just for Beer - With the heavy processing work occuring in the central model, a streamlined viewer or 'page layout' GUI would make life just dandy for large projects. Intelligent video card management, thumbnail placements, and only parsing the database for necessary information would make the process much more efficient and cut down the number of objects being thrown in anger around the office (we are now using only paper cups, and all bottle cap lids are confiscated in the kitchen).
  
• Group Therapy - Going back to multi-disciplanary central database models, we are currently carrying some of our consultants sheets in our BIM model, but they have no way to access and control the layout or content. Turning this into a central file for the entire family will not only make it easier to have one source of content, but allow for easier standardization of consultant sheets back to the main format and content management.
  

This is not meant to be a bitch-fest, but identification of a task that is hammering us from the efficiency side. A little more love in this area could both speed up and simplify this task as well as make it easier to push out to the entire extended team.

Food for thought, I'm going to bed.

G'night Jonboy,

If you VR in a CAVE, does it qualify as SPELUNKING?

Well, there have been some intriguing developments lately in the possibility of utilizing some form of large-format stereoscopic VR as part of pre-construction on this li'l project of ours. Thanks to our reps over at Mechdyne, we were able to make some connections with a terrific Comp Sci researcher at UC Davis' Keck Center, who helped us both translate our Revit data into a custom built Linux ASE viewer as well as being a fantastic salesman for VR. 

Oliver, many thanks.

Going forward, we've been able to track down some potential justifications for utilization of VR as a construction tool:

Virtual mockup rooms -

This is a no-brainer. Construction and schedule costs to traditional, full-scale room mockups are an easy target, as users only get to respond to one room at a time, and changes this late can only be a hit to the construction schedule (can you say escalation and waste impacts...? I knew you can!) Now, imagine a VR environment where you can run your full building, virtualized to 1:1 scale. 

Did I also mention that most users cannot understand architectural drawings?

'nuff said.

Inspector Review tool -

We're dealing with some serious governmental oversight groups out here in Cali. OSHPD alone is bringing potential cost padding of 30-50% on some projects, which is part of the reason hospital construction in CA is through the roof, compared to the rest of the country. Bringing inspectors and other stakeholders through in pre-con holds the potential to identify what they will be reviewing and means and method/sequencing modifications to accomodate the specifics of each reviewer, without getting caught at the 11'th hour in the field.

Design and documentation tool - 

Many architects do not necessarily understand what they're drawing. Any tool to visualize, inspect, and review the data model is beneficial.

Construction scheduling -

The other day, my plumbers brought to light the point that they are having to centralize more of their skilled labor back in the shops, and they are having to deal with an increasing amount of less-skilled labor in the field. This unfortunately means we may have to awake to a fear that we are losing the traditional technical skills (unfortunately, this is hitting architects as well, not just the contractors) that have been honed and handed down in apprenticing over the years. Subcontractors are now in the position that they have to revamp their installation drawings, making them as simple as a user manual, and hoping that the field superintendent can error check and recover in time in the field.

Enter a mobile, onsite CAVE trailer. Large scale VR of the installation to visualize what the installation should be, resolve field coordination issues, and reviewing productivity and sequencing issues from a VICO model. 

I like it.

All of this is just food for thought. Justification and business cases drive our industry, and decisions on this are no different. Tomorrow is another day, and we will have to see where this gets us.....

11 PM Rants of a Model Coordinator

As we come into another major project deadline, it is becoming time for another software rant. With a sensitivity towards market share (yes, I know 90% of all work is less than $40 million in project costs in the US), it is increasingly frustrating that software vendors are still basing their database management on small file management. 

• Frustrating because this is not the future of project delivery.

• Frustrating because we are wasting ridiculous amounts of time translating files and duplicating efforts.

• Frustrating because huge files take 5-10 minutes to load, and every time we save back to the central database. (We shall not mention the quite-not-so-intuitive saving process, either)

• Frustrating because the rest of my team can't use the same platform, or same model w/o translation.
  

This is even more frustrating because it can be an easy fix - approach the model from a server standpoint, stream to the desktop, and take a holistic look at the architectural process from conception to fabrication. 

Don't get me wrong - moving the file to a central model is definitely a move in the right direction. But the pain of trying this on a L/XL/XXL project brings to light how robust the system needs to be, as well as the needs of a full ecosystem of tools. This is like Twitter w/o Tweetdeck, Twitpic, Summize, etc.; a significant piece of the whole, but not the pie itself. 

Hopefully it just won't be another 10 years til we get the full dessert?

A Vision (alcohol not included)

This past week has been a great distraction from the last year, which has been one of the few times in the past few years that I have been able to detour from the daily project grind and focus on computing process evolution. To put this in context, it's been an opportunity to explore the use of stereoscopic large scale visualization (more precisely, the use of a CAVE in a VDC process), and the mental retreat has brought with is some enlightenment:

• The future of the architectural project is all about the integrated project team, and everyone working on one model. This is not happening today, as team siloing and planning for risk and lawsuits still define the boundaries that contain the subgroups. The contractual changes of Integrated Project Delivery will overcome one side of the equation, but the software side can only be overcome by vendors, and somebody needs to bitchslap them with the realization of how much time we burn on a project translating files from one application to another.
• Our model data sets are huge, and this is a good thing. 
• Social networking tools may hold a piece of the solution in how architectural teams function. It may turn out to be a necessity of effective project team management.
• Physical, full-size mockups serve a place, but the ability to supplant them with large-scale VR may finally be here.
• We are entering an age of innovation in architectural process, leaving the age of starchitecture.  This requires an open mind towards project delivery, and, more importantly, the perception that the overall project process can be hacked, reordered, and reconstituted into something leaner, more efficient, and one that can both produce better quality and cheaper buildings. 

I am curious to see the next 5 years in architecture - if the current trends hold true, we may be entering a pace of innovation similar to web 1.0, and the revolutionary cycle may leave more than a few traditionalists in it's wake. 

I think I need a drink right about now....