B7 - Course Reflection - Swartz

This class has been one of my favorites during my time at Drexel. Before the first class, I had expected a traditional course with quizzes, exams, and long lectures about intelligent buildings. I was pleasantly surprised by the actual structure of the course, which consisted of about 50% lecture and 50% group work. I feel that this structure allowed me to learn a lot more about the subjects taught in the class and be more involved in the class work.

In terms of the subjects discussed, I think that they were all very interesting topics that really make you think about the future of intelligent buildings. The main topics discussed in the class that I think will greatly impact my professional and private life include 3D printing, Databases, and BIM. As a student pursuing a career in structural engineering, I foresee that the structural analysis of 3D printed materials will be a major aspect of my career, and holds a lot of potential for work to be done in that field. As far as databases go, I believe I will be using them increasingly more during my career as a structural engineer because they are a great, efficient way of tracking the beam and column sizes in buildings. This class greatly prepared me for the use of databases, and I thought that the database assignment was extremely useful in understanding how to create and effectively use them.

BIM was probably the most important subject for me to learn about during this class. I believe that the fact that we can recognize the evolution of 2 Dimensional drawing software into 3 Dimensional building information modeling gives this generation an advantage over those who experienced the evolution from drafting to AutoCad. There is no argument to make that BIM is not the future of the building industry, and this class only clarified that point further for me.

For the future, I would like to continue studying 3D printing, Databases, and BIM as they pertain to the building industry. I think that this class was not only extremely useful, but a lot of fun at the same time and at the very least opened my eyes to the endless possibilities for the future of the building industry.

Comments:

Maq AlQallaf-

After reading your course reflection I believe we both had similar experiences during this course. It was interesting to read what you took from the class as an architectural engineer with a mechanical concentration, and the similarities between what I took from it as a structural concentration. It appears that we both found value in learning about BIM and Databases, which I think further expresses the emerging importance of these subjects. Nice post.

William Whitesell-

I agree with you that hearing from industry professionals during this class was a lot more useful than a traditional class structure. I also agree with you that the database assignment was a bit difficult, and I think it could have been a bit less open ended in terms of what was required for the assignment. Also, I had similar problems with being requested to focus more on the engineering principles of my final project instead of exploring the opportunities in my subject, which was 3D printing, more extensively.