On bizarre scales again...

Those that state that I repeat myself too much can feel justified:

nothing is new under the bright August construction sun..... apart from scales.

Funny new scales that make your eyes water keep appearing on drawings.

Just found a beauty; (see attached)

It is often discussed in forums that in today’s complex world many of us loose the appreciation of how our work fits into the bigger picture.

We don’t know or care, if the end product of the task we perform daily will end up as a piece of a bicycle sold in Canada or a pair of chopsticks marketed in China.

Still, it is so hard to imagine someone earnestly calculating and typing these scales onto a digital drawing and not thinking about what use they will be and to whom?

Or maybe they do realise the futility of this operation they are obliged to perform and bring a pinch of humour to the task just to make it more bearable.

Perhaps they like to visualise the builder on the construction site, balancing high-up on a scaffolding holding the drawing in one hand, a scale-ruler and a calculator in the other try to work out the distance the balcony-door frame should be set from the load-bearing column.

They afford endless hours of amusement for me too –that ought to make them feel appreciated!

When they can no longer be ignored...

One topic that hit home with many readers of the blog was the post on the subject of ‘BIM bluffers’, earlier in the year.

Interesting, how over the last 6 months I stopped referring to the above figures as such and am more inclined to think of them as BIM cowboys.

There is only so far the bluffing can go without turning sinister and start hitting where really hurts.

While I often found this behaviour daring, smart even cute in the past, I think it is time to get a bit more serious about exposing dodgy behaviour within the field.

Should not bring any disrespect to the ‘farmers of cows’ by associating them with yet another group within the AEC that employs questionable practices, still the temptation is there to hijack the label – even more because the term has a certain ring to when it comes to building.

Their biggest sins? Misleading clients, playing on their inexperience and vulnerability to get into projects they know at the outset are incompetent of delivering.

Even as I am writing this down, it just does not sound right;

I am not talking about little old ladies cheated out of their lifesavings by shoddy insurance-sellers.

I am referring to hardy, shrewd and smart operators that know the industry like the back of their hands.

Something does not sound right...

Actively passive or passively active?

There is something quite weird when it comes to BIM ‘viewers’. Most appear to have been created on the assumption that there is a large section of project participants that are happy to ‘just view’ the project they are supposed to hold a stake in.

Clients are often put into this basket, negating everything I know about building owners/clients/developers.

Presented with a design, they all like to pull it apart, analyse, balance and savour, praise or criticise but more than anything, interact with it.

Scribbles of multicoloured pens over working drawings come to mind, perspective renders prepared with care and attacked with vivid pens also.

As far as I can recall from my past as a practicing architect, dog-eared, coffee stained these documents truly ‘lived’ between the communicating parties.

Digital viewers came to the market as the cheep/free and often highly-disabled versions of the modelling packages designers used.

Finally got around to trial Tekla’s BIMsight. Verdict? Not too bad.

Missing? Offload button for files. Export to formats I can use...

It is fast and smooth, however solid objects come through hollow!

I am non-inclined and definitely lacking-in-patience to systematically review anything –

but I feel obliged to note:

Not impressed by the interface...

Minimalist? Utilitarian? Boring?

How do we have such a mismatch or features in this field:

A Mercedes engine with a Trabant’s navigational interface?

RTM and RTFM

Must have been living under a rock as I had absolutely no clue on the meaning of these acronyms when I came across them recently on one of the BIM related group forums.

Was not going to be the one to publicly ask the question and not intrigued enough to search for it on the net, thankfully it was all revealed.

RTM = Read The Manual; RTFM = I’ll let you work that out yourself... (I’ve copied the explanation from the source here, even I got the message quickly...)

I learned two software packages from manuals.

Three if you count Coreldraw, though only got half through that book.

All of this happened almost 20 years ago!

The time of manuals has gone. Or at least in the sense of ‘this is the interface, these are the commands, the buttons...’

By now the way we interact with the machine should be common practice. By and large it is.

Only when software developers ignore this, we find ourselves facing packages that we need to start learning from scratch.

The ‘proud-parents’ of those products may have thought to have invented the best possible way to rotate a building through the mouse or the most ergonomic way to spread the commands over the ribbon, but if I need to spend hours to memorise these tools and moves...they’ve lost me.

(Crocodile Dundee figures out how to use the bidet)

The Irish mug...

My birthday today. Only mentioning it because of the nuclear connection.

The Hiroshima bombing 2 decades prior to my arrival has somewhat coloured every one of my personal celebrations so far.

I’ve regularly enjoyed peace candles burning in unison with rapidly multiplying age-celebratory ones on mostly makeshift cakes put together on summer holidays (first part of my life) and winter work-around –the-clock evenings (second part of it).

A much less noteworthy event than the 2 mentioned previously occupies my attention at the moment:  The struggle with the equipment.

My two laptops with out-of-synch keyboards keep giving me endless grief.

One of those experts that calculates (as part of his/her daily task) the ‘possible compounded savings the fixing of a dripping tap offers’ could probably put a clear figure on my loss of productivity due to regularly miss-hitting the CTRL key.

It bemuses me a little when product designers get it wrong – a bit like the ‘Irish mug’ we once had, that placed the handle on the inside of the utensil.

That software interface developers underestimate the disruption a misplaced toolbox can cause, I’ve got used to, from designers of tangible gadgets I expect more understanding of the ‘power of habit’ that drives us humans.

I’ve resigned myself to put up with this – loss of productivity or not, 2 laptops still better than one for now.

Get into BIM so you can make faster informed decisions!

But what if the question is whether you should be getting into BIM at all?

And what if that question required you to make an informed decision on a subject that you are unable to do because of lack of independent and meaningful data?

The wording ‘ability to make informed decision’ has become a bit of a mantra of BIM and I find this to be a bit of a paradox.

If anything, BIM managed to further muddy the already gloomy waters of AEC project information management.

Let’s look at this from a practical point: what can be considered a decision needed to be made that would do well with supporting information?

Well, it depends.

On the decision maker’s perspective, priorities, tasks and objectives.

You can find books written on just how much information a simple column can carry in an intelligent model.

The shape, the size, the materials that make it, the number of nails needed to fix the formwork and even the time the ready-mix-concrete guy will take his coffee-break.

Sounds all highly sophisticated.

But, what if the model can’t tell me if the described column is correctly set out?

Am I any better informed to make a decision to cast/place/sign-off the column than if it was sitting as a fat black line on a dumb drawing?

The difference is in ‘Verified’ information.

The under-appreciated digital clothes hanger...

The retail industry had worked it out a long time ago:

A piece of clothing looks better displayed in 3D (on a mannequin or a clothes hanger) then lying flat.

I got to a similar conclusion in the early days of my VC work.

Pick up any of the flat sheets the building designers produced and hang them on the virtual project clothes hanger (mannequin, skeleton, framework, you choose the best term) and they’ll look better;

And likely to be more useful too.

I have described my work methods previously, how I first create a 3D reference file with grids, levels and north directions set out and set to as much accuracy as reasonable.

I then guard these like a hawk throughout the project primarily because everything else gets related to them.

I often incorporate many flat sheets within this 3D files very early in the piece, as plans on relevant storeys as well as sections, elevations in corresponding places.

Within the industry I found this practice to be less widespread than I’d expected it to be. Numerous reasons for it, files arriving in PDF formats (only), not accurate and disproportionate drawings, files overburdened by 2D stuff become slow and sluggish etc etc...

Puzzles me a bit that no AEC related software-developer has taken this issue under their wing and fleshed out a workable solution.

The digital lifesaver...

I’ve had Michael Anonuevo’s email regarding his review of the 3Dconnexion mouse on my ‘to do list’ for weeks. Hope to get around reading it soon as I am a committed mouse user and this looks like an interesting gadget.

Ever since I’ve set out to learn AutoCAD on DOS, various versions of the digital rodent have influenced my daily work life.

Some of its permutations bypassed me, the laptop pad-and-button-mouses, also never got to really trust the cordless.

Without getting overly enthusiastic about it, I wish to highlight that the typical two-buttoned-wheelie-device has some inspired qualities.

Consider this: Over the last 2 decades it has stayed truly intuitive and easy to use, even though a wide range of applications are accessed through it.

Contrast this to the evolution of various remote controls and you’ll see my point.

It is widely regarded as a cliché, but would anyone without a double doctorate in the specific subject still attempt to programme a VCR from a remote? Maybe Zsuzsie, our tech angel. Certainly not me.

What prompted me into commenting on this subject again were numerous discussions I’ve encountered recently on various forums evaluating navigational abilities of different BIM modelling packages. They highlighted to me the fact, how lifesaving the mouse has been for me as I got to learn new packages.

Even Revit. Especially Revit.

Great expectations!

Business 101: Never over-promise, over-deliver instead!

Exceed your client’s expectations by giving them more than you initially promised.

Nice idea, petty it seldom works when it comes to BIM based services, regardless of whom the interaction involves.

My experience: give them a finger, they’ll expect the hand... and the other hand...

Why not throw the entire body in while we are at it?

Truly, it is hard to bring realistic expectations to the field when so many that are involved in trading BIM services have no idea what to ask for, how to assess proposals and if it is OK to accept the end products once the contracts are executed or ask for more. And more....and more...

In my ‘real architect’ days I went into great pains to get my clients to understand what they’d be getting once their building was built, sizes of rooms, lighting levels, feel of the space, colours, materials...I worked hard for them to visualise these before the final decisions were made.

That was not an easy job to do, many clients were still surprised at the end (pleasantly or sadly otherwise);

Still, looking back and comparing what needed to be done on those projects to what I ought to do nowadays for people to set clear BIM expectations was a bit of a child’s play.

If in doubt, under under-promise!

Ramadan Kareem!

A pinch and a punch, it is the first day of the month.

Ran out of inspirational BIM topics. But don’t go far, I’ll bounce back.

Something mildly annoying related to BIM is bound to come up soon and get my writing going again or I may trawl through my Linkedin groups’ discussions for an idea I can dissect or just lightly comment on.  

First day of Ramadan! The holy month observed by millions is celebrated widely in the city I am residing in at present.

I’ve lived in a number of towns around the world for decent stretches of time.

And I noticed:

In Auckland, New Zealand, you are permitted to walk on the grass in all public spaces.

On the other hand, you are not able to cross the harbour bridge on foot.

In Budapest, Hungary you may cross the river, on numerous bridges and any time of the day. However, the gorgeous, murky Danube that flows under them is out of bound for swimming.

In Novi Sad, Serbia – down the same river, you can swim on a beautiful beach visited by many every summer, yet aren’t allowed to walk on the grass in most public parks...

It is a varied world around us, speckled and stippled, spotty and striped.

I enjoy this diversity most of-the-time, it moves me and motivates.

Ramadan Kareem!