Mesmerising MEP Models...

There is a hard-to-explain high level of delight people get from looking at digital representations of MEP models.

No matter how ugly and utilitarian their real-world counterparts are, these still- and moving images are treated like newborn babies with genuine wonder and uninhibited admiration.

Why?

Not sure!

Is the dynamics of the colourful pipes and ducts that does it? Something childish and playful, yet complex too?

Like a marble-run remembered from childhood or a McDonalds playground slide set?

Or is it the presumed intelligence of the creator that makes it so attractive?

One must be really smart to be able to create such graphically pleasing digital spaghetti AND make it look meaningful too! A computer geek, a digital artist and a mechanical engineer, all rolled into one person? I’ll have one of those, please!

Contrast this reaction with the reception a typical 3D representation of a reinforcing detail gets. Show a nicely rendered maze of colourful rods to a random sample of people from AEC and they will shake their heads in unison...

“why would you model reinforcing?...we’d NEVER model steel within concrete!...”

The ‘random’ sampling may be overstating it – those charged with getting some of the more complicated steel connections executed tend to be quite enthusiastic about these instructional graphics. Based on my experience, anyway.

And my team has modelled reinforcing.

Lots of it!