B7 - Group C - Sean Coffey - Course Reflection

The course was awesome...

The true and not so short answer is that I really enjoyed the course. As person that sees the value in using technology to automate and organize my life a little more than most the course was insightful. The variety of technology that is becoming available and applicable to the ACE industry makes now seem like a fantastic time to be in. But if the course has actually taught me anything, whether it be that I should expect unexpected changes in the way I live and work in the future, that promising technologies will only become mainstream if someone takes the risk to prove that the technology is viable and applicable, that just like any tool new technologies can be applied to any number of things but are often only best applicable to a few tasks, or that when I use a program and feel that I am proficient in fact I have only scratched the surface of what it can do, I really only needed to learn that I don't need to that as the next generation of engineer I should be an advocate for technology. I don't necessarily need to learn every program and become a technology wiz or come away from the course and push myself to learn each topic that was covered, I just need to not be ignorant of technology and become an advocate for its greater application. I may have never come to this realization if it weren't for another professor who teaches the BIM in Construction course essentially admitted that it was his reason for being a teacher, to give students a view of how the greater use of technology is where the industry is headed, but is often impeded for reasons that are not well founded.

B5 - Group C - Sean Coffey - Object Oriented Databases

Object Oriented Databases

Before researching object oriented databases, I did not know what object oriented databases were and was not aware how they were extensively used for to enable BIM software. Object oriented databases simply put are databases made up of complex objects that are defined by simple data and algorithm attributes. These attributes can be edited and modified manually and automatically.

Differences from Other Databases

Object oriented databases are unlike traditional databases in some important ways. They contain simple and complex attributes while more traditional databases like relational databases only contain simple data. The simpler databases store data in tables that are often reference other tables to return useful information.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Object oriented databases have their advantages and disadvantages over other less complex and traditional databases. Some of the advantages include their programmability to act more intelligently and automatically than other databases. This is accomplished with the embed code and algorithms. This code and how the database interacts with other databases makes object oriented databases more complex and due to the increased complexity they are harder to maintain and edit. On the other hand, if object oriented databases are setup properly they require less maintenance, while more traditional databases require regular maintenance. Also object oriented databases are work better when implemented to communicate and interact with other databases.

BIM’s Use of Object Oriented Databases

One of the best ways to use object oriented databases is when programing CAD and BIM software. Autodesk leverages the advantages of object oriented databases to make the intelligent programs such as Revit. Object oriented databases are fundamental to how Revit acts parametrically. An example of how this database type is implemented in Revit is to create families that are intelligent and modifiable. Revit families are defined by simple and complex properties or attributes. Example simple attributes are the dimensions of a door. They can be quickly and easily modified by user to customize the door to match the actual door that will be installed into the real life building. While a complex attribute would be how the door interacts while placing the door on walls with different widths. The frame for the door has to have an intelligent algorithm that determines how the door will automatically modify its width to match the wall width. The use of object oriented databases makes Revit seemingly simple, work intelligently and nearly flawlessly.

References

http://www.archdaily.com/302490/a-brief-history-of-bim

http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/database/basicdb/dataobject.html

Comments

Mohammed Alqallaf
http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/02/b5-mohammed-alqallaf-group-e.html

Bridget Frasca
http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/02/b5-group-d-frasca-uses-of-databases-in.html?showComment=1455059965158#c2225312694583606569

B4 - "Internet of Things" in Interlligent vs. Sustainable Buildings - Sean Coffey

Project Topic Description:

How the internet of things distinguishes intelligent buildings from sustainable buildings, its uses and limitations.

I decided a project topic that dealt with the comparing how the internet of things concept is and could be applied to intelligent buildings and sustainable buildings for many reasons. Overall I am interested to find out how this evolution is progressing and what is currently happening to make buildings better by embedding technology in them. It will be cool to find out what the future may hold, but also this topic choice will help get a better understanding of what an intelligent building is and how it compares to sustainable building, something that I am already familiar with.

This topic will not necessarily be straightforward. My partner and I will need to research intelligent buildings, sustainable buildings and agree upon definitions for each. Also we will need to do a lot of research into how devices and sensors are being integrated into building to make them smarter. There are a large variety of applications of technology for both building types which will need to be generalized or selectively analyzed to find out which applications are comparable. After that we will need to perform an analysis on how they compare. What makes the implementations different? Do they perform the same task but achieve a different result? The biggest challenge here will be finding sufficient research to back up our conclusions. We should be able to get some good data from researching examples of different examples of intelligent buildings and sustainable buildings, scholarly articles that present reviewed and tests theories of building systems that have been improved by integrating sensors to enable automated building adaptation that is directed to making the building more intelligent or more sustainable.

Comments

@Dianna Vogel
http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b4-group-b-dianna-vogel.html?showComment=1454046675441#c1298989061727037337

I am interested to see more of what you end up discovering by modeling Mies Van der Rhoe’s Farnsworth House. I think that you all have made a wise decision to pick a project that lightens your workload and also developing a crucial architectural engineering skill. Our most recent guest lecturer and Mr. Mitchell  have certainly been emphasizing the benefit of learning and becoming confident with Revit. Like them I think this is a great way to prepare yourselves for Senior Design and what better way is there to learn and practice Revit than by recreating an existing building. You may be able to use the structural analysis tools built into Revit to help you with your structural design class deliverables or export the finished design to a program that can do a better structural analysis than Revit. But I am more interested in what you all will find about how the building accomplished its architectural purpose of integrating itself with nature from modeling the building. You may also find that the building was not an optimum design either due to a mistake in its construction or on purpose to make the building more connected with nature. I would bet that you would bind that so much glass in a building in the 1950’s would not be the best choice for a building built in Illinois climate. The use of a lot of glass does not lend itself to good heat retention. There may be other discoveries that you come across that help you to better understand how Mies Van der Rhoe achieved the objective behind the buidling’s design by applying architectural principles. I am interested to hear more about your reflection on recreating the building.

@ Laura Worley

http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b4-group-worley.html

Your project topic has also been an interest of mine because of how adaptive facades can make a building come to life in a small way. Just like how the lit facade of Cira Center arguably makes the building more expressive and attractive. I enjoy how the facade changes themes and makes Philly’s skyline a little more artistic.

As you mentioned there are many different types of buildings with adaptive facades and they vary widely in design and purpose. Because of this you and Allison may need to narrow down your topic by focusing on specific types of adaptive building facades. Whatever you chose to do moving forward, I am excited to hear about the building facades you feature in your project.

B3 - Group C - Sean Coffey

What are the possible future advantages of Revit/BIM?

I found that there are various ways in which BIM is likely to improve in the future. In many ways the future advantages have been implemented but they are not in standard use but are foreseen to become standard, while there are other potential interoperability and unutilized capabilities of BIM that may exist in the future depending on how technology advances, the level of adoption and the economic support for those advances to become mainstream.

The currently existing advantages that are under utilized are the development and use of as built models for the future operation, maintenance, renovation and eventual demolition of the building, full interoperability of BIM with other specialty design programs, support of the complete design of a building in single BIM programs, provide quicker analysis of building systems, support modular and lean construction through prefabrication, track construction components on the site and have a real time updating schedule based on feedback from site sensors , the viewability of all building systems at the same time in a “stitched together” model, the direct use of a BIM model to fabricate the components needed, the use of virtual or augmented reality to facilitate building construction, Integrated Project Development will become standard.

As all of these capabilities that have been developed during the construction of building and other structures or products become mainstream. These future advantages of BIM in development will endow construction savings, efficiency, optimization, learning, quality, speed, safety and accuracy benefits. These will be realized by optimizing the construction process to reduce waste, minimize errors in components and schedule, limit the number of onsite activities and crew interferences, better record data about the construction process, streamline delivery, and require less work on site to assemble modular components. These will mostly occur due to leveraging what is learned from collected data and process automation through more advanced software to design a comprehensive and well informed concept to design to construction to operation work flow and feedback strategy.

Future advantages that may be possible with BIM but questionably feasible due to economics, lack of adoption or physical limitations such as computing power are the use of 3D printing to perform custom construction, use of drones or robots for construction, the automation of building systems design,

These plausible next generation advantages of BIM could increase the ability of BIM to develop custom and unique building features, automate the design, construction and operation process, use collected data and resulting performance information to optimize future construction and design, and reduce the need for human labor to construct a building.

Drones could be used to monitor construction progress through monitoring the proper installation of components and support the development of as built models. Robots could be used to help construct the structure, removing the need for human labor and performing hazardous tasks. Both the drones robots could increase the accuracy and speed and reduce the cost with which the structure is constructed.

Automated and comprehensive analyses of an entire building throughout its lifecycle could identify potential problems in the design that will unnecessarily shorten the life of the building or are non optimum. These analyses could show the designer where to pay attention to improve a building design and present the data needed to make the decision. They would effectively remove all of the tedious task that result from designing a building and leave the complex, intuitive decision making up to the engineer. If programs eventually gain the capability to make those tough decisions then programs could automatically design entire buildings or building systems so that only a check by an experienced and capable engineer is required to determine the functionality of the design.

Lastly, the digitization of codes that automatically modify families into components that meet the standards and requirements for location the model will be built. For instance the Canadian and US International Building codes have slight differences in how far out the handrails in stairwells should extend past the end of the stairs. Canada requires 11.75 inches and the US uses 12 inches. Based on the location the model is set to be built in, only stairwell handrails designs that meet the requirements would be importable into the model or the handrail family could be programmed to modify the handrail extension length to meet the requirements. This seems entirely possible, but because of the huge variety of building codes and their differences, the process to to understand the code would have to be automatic, taking advantage of text recognition software, language understanding artificial intelligence, and .link the output to the BIM code parameter input regions. This technology is already possible but is not fully reliable and expensive to produce.

References

Volk, Rebekha, Julian Stengel, and Frank Schultman. "Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Existing Buildings — Literature Review and Future Needs." Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Existing Buildings. Automation in Construction, Mar. 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2016.

Yoders, Jeff. "5 Tech Trends Transforming BIM/VDC." Building Design + Construction. N.p., 23 Dec. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.

Comments

@Samuel Boyce

http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b3-samuel-boyce-group-a.html?showComment=1453876670088#c3445327528887797374

I think you are right about most of the future pitfalls of BIM modeling. Many of them exist today and will only get worse such as trusting that the computer program has done the correct thing and increasing complexity of the programs and creations of the programs. Somewhere there is likely to be an error that has been missed since class detections have not been reduced to zero. If were stop questioning whether or not the design has been done right then we will need to rethink how we design buildings. Many firms push the software to make profit and may not perform all the checks necessary and end up under designing building components. It gets scary when those building components that are faultily designed are crucial to making the building safe or keeping it standing. Another one of my fears is that the program operations will become so complicated that the usual engineer's check stops working. This could lead to a failure and there would not be easy way to check for an error so fewer companies would bother to put in the effort to do the check.

@Christian A in Alexis Akins Post

http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b3-group-c-alexis.html?showComment=1453877679281#c7001707379768372946

I am very excited to hear that this technology is becoming a reality due to its abilities to enhance communication. It can perform all the tasks that you mentioned and maybe more depending on how the program becomes integrated with other functionalities. Like was show during the presentation the owner, architect, or engineer could go to the site even before construction starts and have the building model augment reality so that they can get a feel for what the building will actually be like. The communication from an offsite location could be upgrade with translation abilities so that language barriers wont get in the way of real time communication and decision making. Additionally, the owner could don a VR headset and take a virtual tour of the building which allows them to inspect the building model in a way that they are more familiar with. There are so many uses. I think this will be the next big game changer that will really push forward collaboration and communication of construction project stakeholders.

Week 4 BIM Discussion - BIM makes the Engineer's Jobs Harder vs. BIM makes the Engineer's Job Easier

BIM has made the engineer’s job harder because there are greater expectations of the engineers to multitask, collaborate, understand others disciplines, perform non engineering tasks, build increasingly complex buildings, using multiple sophisticated programs. Fear of missing a mistake made by the computer. BIM also makes an engineer’s job easier and allows them to get more done at a higher quality because of the complexity of BIM and its capabilities. It removes the tedious design  tasks from what the engineer normally does and indicates where they need to pay attention. The easy problems are solved automatically, but the complex problems are not. Designers are able to make better building designs and gain a realistic understand understanding of the building by making collaboration, communication, and visualization easier, but leads to more complicated problems.

B2: Group C - Coffey BIM Used for Maintenance and Operation

         BIM is now a crucial part of the Architectural, Electrical and Construction industry, but the the large adoption of BIM was only a recent event and has not always been the basis on which the industry has worked. Before the clash detection, project scheduling, collaboration improvement capabilities and other cost savings benefits of BIM were recognized and proven as results of BIM’s use, the time and money investment required to change from CAD to BIM deterred industrial change (Lu). There was no way to prove whether creating a BIM model of an entire project before its construction would result in the advertised benefits. Even still BIM has not been fully adopted for every project to use the advertised benefits. (Eastman).

Multiple dimensions can be added to a BIM model. Common dimensions include 3D model, construction scheduling, project cost estimation, life cycle assessment / sustainability and maintenance and operation implementations. Of these, I would like to go into more discussion about facility management. This is a dimension where BIM’s capabilities are used to improve building maintenance and operation. Although there are proven benefits to performing this extra work its is often not performed unless required by the client. Even when this dimension is required by the client it does not receive the same amount of attention as other dimensions because it does not directly affect the profit of the designer and contractor. All the benefits are passed onto the client. Even nearing the end of a project the contractor and designer are more focused on finishing the project and not highly interested in investing the profit from the project completion in something that does not have a sure return on investment. While the return on investment for the owner is conservatively 64% over a payback period of 1.56 years (Teicholz). The development and use of the facilities management dimension is able to have this significant of an impact on building maintenance and operation because the as built model of the building can be drafted to include  parametric data about each piece of equipment in the building, its exact location behind a wall, the model number, fabricator’s contact information, and equipment maintenance manuals (Teicholz). The BIM model can also be integrated with a building monitoring program that helps to identify problems and provide maintenance reminders (Teicholz). This wealth of information will enable the maintenance workers to react more quickly, reduce maintenance errors, perform better repairs, and reduce the amount of work they have to perform. These improvements will reduce the cost to maintain the building and extend the life of the building. If the building were to require renovation or retrofit, then an accurate BIM model would prove invaluable at increasing the efficiency and ease with which the building is reused.

While the cost is a significant deterrence to the owner requiring the facilities management dimension, sometimes that dimension is not necessary due to how important the building being constructed is and the cost benefit to the implementation of a building monitoring system. The cost benefit limits may fall short for the implementation of this dimension in a small residential home due be crucial tools for large, complicated and important structures such as a nuclear power plant. For the later, it is necessary that a highly accurate BIM model and monitoring system be implemented to notify maintenance workers of a problem, to extend the life of the very expensive building, and to reduce the chances of maintenance errors. The economic loss related to a failure at a powerplant greatly outweighs the loss of a residential house. In this case the reduction of risk is the primary motivator and not the return on investment. Meanwhile the investment would only be worthwhile if it actually produces plausible benefit and mitigates or prevent economic losses due to a failure.

Comments

Alexis,

I liked how you mentioned that the use of BIM for IPD is a large benefit of BIM modeling. I believe that the use of BIM as a collaboration tool is its largest benefit. The ability for the owner, maintenance manager, and building design and construction disciplines to quickly and easily collaborate improve the quality of the design and empowers the collaborators to develop solutions to conflicts between systems, often leading to a better solution then otherwise possible. The other benefits support the usefulness of BIM as a collaboration tool, through better better visualization of the building so that problems can be identified and the information in the model is the same for everyone so they can more easily and accurately communicate despite the potential distance between them.

Bryan,

I enjoyed the level of detail and explanation that you went into to describe the interoperability issues between BIM programs and supporting programs. Like you mentioned limitations on the interoperability of programs historically has been a problem that affected the effectiveness of using BIM programs and caused modeling errors. From what I have read, the interoperability has enabled BIM programs to accomplish tasks that no one program is capable of or is not as capable of when compared to supporting programs. Because there has been more focus on making the different BIM programs interoperable they are able to produce more complex buildings and perform more thorough analyses of building models. Just like you I think that there is still room for improvement and that the largest barrier to improvement is the collaboration between the software programmers developing the programs and the users of the programs. For instance, if an engineer is trying to produce an optimized building that requires the use of new technology or to perform a unique task to qualify a building that has a special use, BIM programs may not have the interoperability with the program that performs the required analysis. This interoperability will eventually be developed with enough need for BIM programs to perform that rare analysis because it was either not performed before or because the demand for that capability was outweighed by the demand for other more used capabilities.

References

Eastman, Charles M. BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011. Print.

Lu, Weisheng, Ada Fung, Yi Peng, Cong Liang, and Steve Rowlinson. "Demystifying Construction Project Time–Effort Distribution Curves: BIM and Non-BIM Comparison." Journal of Management in Engineering J. Manage. Eng. 31.6 (2015): 04015010. Web. 

Teicholz, Paul M. BIM for Facility Managers. N.p.: Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013. Print.

B1: Group C - Sean Coffey

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a thing of the present, there are numerous tech companies that have their own AI and actively use their AI’s to perform services for the public or commercial users. So it should not be surprising that Google is continually developing and producing its own form of artificial intelligence. But unlike other tech companies, Google has made a version of it’s artificial intelligence software public so that researchers, students, and companies can modify it for new tasks, upgrade it to make it more efficient and intelligent and learn from it. Google’s decision to crowd source the development of its artificial intelligence has given the company some valuable feedback that it would not have received or been able to develop otherwise. Google did not expressedly require feedback from those that chose use its AI software, but does expect some feedback for enabling the industry with its software. This also shows that AI development is no small task and even a company as big as Google cannot hire all the specialists that exist.

The artificial intelligence technology that Google creates is being worked on and implemented to provide more intelligent, improved services like Google search, voice search, and numerous android applications. The software is constantly tested with the data received from Google users that permit the use of their data to improve Google’s AI software. The AI software learns and optimizes itself based on the data and Google programmers use the data to teach, test and improve the software. The results of this can be seen in how quickly Google’s voice search has improved to understand Google users speaking in different languages and in with different accents and / or dialects. In two years the error rate for voice searches fell from 25% to 8%. [1] Considering the difficulty of this task, that is an amazing improvement driven by data analytics and efficient program architecture.

[1] Gershgorn, Dave. "How Google Aims To Dominate Artificial Intelligence." Popular Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016. < http://www.popsci.com/google-ai >

Robotics

The advance in robotics has come relatively quickly but has not really completely caught up with science fiction and implement in many industries. One of the few industries that heavily relies on robotics is space travel and exploration. There are many probes and rovers that are often too far away from earth to be remotely controlled and have to autonomous to a certain extent. This largely depends on how far away the science vehicle is away from earth. The mars science laboratory rover named Curiosity is only autonomous at navigation and relies on human input to decide whether or not to perform some tests and experiments. [2] On the other hand the New Horizons probe that flew by pluto last year was completely autonomous during its flyby. The reason for this difference is because a round trip communication with the New Horizons probe would take about 9 hours while a similar communication with mars would take 45 minutes. Because of the extreme communication lag, the need for communication between the probe and earth had to be reduced and the nature of how fast the probe would pass pluto also made it imperative to make use of every second by programming the actions of the probe. This autonomy lead to the probe being designed to perform the entire flyby, full system checks and error corrections autonomously. [3] These are huge accomplishments and show how the automation of vehicles, at least in space, can improve the performance of a vehicle and operate in relatively hazardous environments. They prove the validity of developing future autonomous vehicles to perform mining and construction tasks. [4, 5]

[2] "Spacecraft Systems and Components." New Horizons. NASA, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.

< http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-259 >

[3] "NASA'S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation." NASA'S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation. NASA, 27 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.

< http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-259 >

[4] "Building a Lunar Base with 3D Printing." Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute. NASA, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.

< http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/building-a-lunar-base-with-3d-printing/ >

[5] "RMC - About the Competition." NASA’s Robotic Mining Competition. NASA, 17 Apr. 2015. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.

< http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/nasarmc/about >

Comments:

Bryan,

I found all three of your articles very interesting and inspiring, but I wonder how long the industry will take to advance to making these processes feasible on an everyday basis. There are many roadblocks, such as capability limitations of the 3D printers that you have mentioned and those that have been mentioned in class, that will need to overcome before that will happen. I also see it being hard for the 3D printed building industry to grow without the development of 3D printers that are reusable. I do not see the industry developing large, unique 3D printers that can only be used for 1 building design. This is approach would be economically infeasible and limit the construction speed. This would favor the use of small 3D printers like those used to make the steel bridge in Amsterdam. Because of their smaller size, the printers could be quickly produced, easily replaced,  more capable of constructing different building designs, and readily collaborate with other printer types to produce composite structures. If this were to happen in the future, it would all but revolutionize how buildings are constructed.

Redus,

I also researched artificial intelligence and found an example of how Google has incorporated artificial intelligence in its applications to the application created by Dulight to assist the blind. Google actually uses artificial intelligence in a lot of its applications to perform tasks like translating text in a picture from one language to another, understanding speech, and recognizing the people in pictures taken and upload to the cloud. There are numerous other examples and it is amazing and somewhat unsettling what can be accomplished with the use of artificial intelligence.