AE510 Overview

Looking back I can definitely say I found this class to be one of the most interesting classes I have taken here at Drexel University. Not only did this course open multiple discussions on intelligent building topics which are not explored in undergraduate architectural engineering classes but also provide an enjoyable experience while gaining new knowledge. Taking this class has provided me with few reality checks and also provided a platform to acquire new skill sets with will be beneficial in my line of work but also help improve my resume as David Morrison mentioned.     

Taking about reality checks, for the past four years I have been attending Drexel University I have been presented with my major of Architectural and Civil Engineering from closed educational point of view. But it was not until this course I was encouraged to start looking at the career I am pursuing from a real world prospect of what I have been taught and learned during my last couple years here at Drexel. The topics of weekly blog posts and presentations of public speakers were the key features of this class which made this possible. For example entering this class I considered myself as a well experienced Autodesk Revit user, thinking of the software being still pretty new to the Architecture, Civil and Mechanical Engineering world. But after hearing the presentations of Eric Kuszewski from KlingStunnins and Huw Roberts from Bentley about Building Information Modeling (BIM) and its presences in the real world today, that my skill set of 3D modeling software is very  minimal compared to average standards employers are pursuing today. So I agree with Nathan Barry and Lorena Alvarado mentioning in their posts that the guest speakers invited to the class were well selected as they really knew what they were talking about but also presented the information in a manner which did not bore the students in the process.    

  

Two main skills I was able to gain from this course was the ability to create a family in Revit and creating a database in Microsoft Access. Now knowing how to create families in Revit I will be able to create custom structure components to provide 3D section details on construction drawings which I had difficulty doing previously during my past coop. Additionally many structural engineering concepts and methods are being carried out with computer software such as SAP2000 which are all mainly running on databases. So learning the basic concept of database and how they work provide a better understanding of the concept of how these structural analysis software works. Also having this intuition of database and its operation behind the main interface can help error screen results which the software provides efficiently. Having gained these two skill sets was the most beneficial aspect of the course.      

The course was well structured and multiple concepts of intelligent building were presented to the students as an introduction class for the topic of intelligent building. Each subtopic presented in the class can be turned into its individual 10 week class. I have heard of rumors of architectural engineering department adding a new concentration of digital building and I believe this course would make a great introduction class for that concentration.