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.  

How flow sensors work?

Flow sensors are used for wide range of fluids in multiple industries for various measurements. There are many types of flow sensors and they all measure “volume or area per unit time”. And depending of the sensor type there are multiple ways this volume per unit time can be measured, but they all use basic concept of fluid flow principles with concept such as the Bernoulli’s principle. Some of the basic flow sensors used today are orifice meter, venture meter, flow nozzle, and pitot tubes which us the principle of difference in pressure from the Bernoulli equation. Then there are sensors which use direct force to measure the flow which include rotameter, turbine meter, propeller flow meter, coriolis mass flow meter. Using pressure differences and direct force are the most common methods used to measure flow rate but there are other complicated methods such as ultrasonic flow meters, magnetic flow meter, calorimetric flow meter, gear flow meter, thermal flow meter, and couple more.

All the flow sensors which use pressure difference use Bernoulli equation which is 

Where the condition on both sides of the sensors are inversely related to each other, therefore the equation can be manipulated into the pressure drop across the flow sensor is equal to velocity of the flow squared. When calculating the flow using the different sensors the area of the opening on both sides of the sensor, density of the liquid, and pressure readings from the sensors are known an can be plugged into the Bernoulli equation to find the velocity because V₁ = V₂ = V. Below are few images portraying how some of this sensors operate and how the pressures differences (dp) can be measured.     

Orifice Plate Flow Sensor

Venturi Tube Flow Sensor

Flow Nozzles Flow Sensor

Sensors using direct force to measure velocity use methods of balancing forces with in systems where the force applied by the fluid flowing through the sensor is measured and manipulated with a proportion factor to get the flow of fluid in the system. Below are some images which portray how the forces applied by the fluid are with few different types of direct force flow sensors.

Rotameter: resistance of gravity force of the bolt is being measured here.

Turbine meter: work is being measured here where work equals force times distance, and the distance id known so the force can be calculated from the work measured by the sensor.

Sources:

http://www.princeton.edu/~asmits/Bicycle_web/Bernoulli.html

https://controls.engin.umich.edu/wiki/index.php/FlowSensors

Uses of Databases in Design Offices

Databases in the design office environment are like professionally trained personal assistants who can respond to various types of commends with a click of a button. Designers mainly benefit from archive databases which can provide multiple disciplines of information immediately while working on a project. Design companies are starting to build their own databases which archive all the designs they have produced before and all the research which went behind the completion of all those designs. For example University of Salford, UK and John McCall Architects (JMA) are collaborating on producing a database which will assist with a process known as Knowledge Management which can provide aid to designers at JMA to work more efficiently on their projects.

The database for the Knowledge Management strategy will act as an employee of the firm which knows every detail of work that the firm performed to date which will always stay with the firm never to be lost due to retirement, termination, or so on. Additionally this virtual employee’s knowledge will be accessible for all employees all the time through the database setup with “features including the incorporation of video and audio clips, links to external authoritative sources, content qualifiers in the form of source or reference metadata, and annotation capabilities to capture tacit knowledge” (Egbu and Sidawai). So let’s say an structural engineer is designing a special joint which he or she is not fully sure of how to encounter the design of that joint, the designer can search their companies’ database and see if that type of joint with similar constraints was design before in any of their projects. If so the designer does not have to start from scratch because the database will provide the history and facts about that design such as the efficiency, positivity, problematic factors, constraints to be caution with and so on.      

          

The database being used for Knowledge Management process at JMA is one of many different types of databases which are part of the design industry today. As Maria Gonzalez mentioned in her blog post of how databases are part of the BIM design process which provide the functionality of keeping information of all the different components of the building which results in the facilitation of documentation, cost estimations, and etc. which allows designers to work more efficiently saving cost and time. Both the database Maria and I mentioned provide better efficiency leading to common benefits of saving time and cost, some key results of successful databases.   

Sources:

(Egbu and Sidawai) http://www.itcon.org/data/works/att/2012_5.content.03794.pdf

Team 12

Talking about buildings being “Green” people mainly think about using green energy such as solar panels or wind turbines and it is mostly put in prospect to commercial buildings being able to gain the most from it. But going green can also mean using less energy and can also be put in prospect to residential real-estate having a great impact to going green. So my group and I plan on designing a database and prototype suggestions for integrating common systems in residential buildings to save energy. We plan on basing our design and prototypes based off the research and technology which was used to create a successful product out in the market called Nest. For people who are unfamiliar with Nest, it is an innovated new “smart thermostat” out on the market which can learn its owners tasks based on patterns and also wirelessly connect to the web to acquire outdoor conditions and integrate it with indoor conditions to run the HVAC system in the building efficiently. It has an easy plug and play installation with a very simple to use interface which can be learned quickly by an average person. Its Wi-Fi connection to the web able its user to have wide range of accessibility which is a key feature for better options for integration. Additionally the Nest is compatible to a wide range of units in its field and offered for an affordable cost for any average family in the United States with return on investment of rest than two years.

For our project, just as Nest operates for the HVAC system of the residential buildings, we will research how a very similar concept can be incorporated with other important systems in the residential building such as lighting system, electric system, curtain system and etc. we will also look into how the interface which is provided by Nest with its products can be expanded to link these additional systems without affecting the simplicity and very low learning curve of the Nest interface and controls. Key factors that will play the main goals of the research and design will be simplicity, accessibility, wide range of compatibility, affordability, and options of integration. As a team we have a growing interest in the key factors mentioned in the previous sentence in addition to electronic gadgets which also relates to the topic of integration being explored in class that has lead us to this project. None of the team members have every worked with creating a database which we believe will be the biggest challenge when completing this project.          

  

Sources:

http://www.nest.com/blog/category/technology/

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429449/new-nest-thermostat-the-bigger-deal-is-the-software/

BIM in the years to come...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is definitely going to be the main stream method used by architects and engineers for building projects for many years to come in the future. But being on the same boat as Rita Pauliushchyk of being new to the subject matter of BIM and in the process of training myself to become proficient with all the tools which are incorporated in BIM it is hard to accurately predict where BIM will stand 5-10 years from now as she mentioned in her blog post. The reason I am confident that BIM is the future of architects and engineers is because firms which have already implemented BIM in their projects resulted in achieving decrease time, cost reduction, facilitating documentation, greater quality of visualization, allowing better integration, and facilitating sharing and transferring of information as Maria Gonzalez stated in her blog post has all allowed more and more people to gain confidence in the BIM process as a whole. One of the main reasons it is difficult to predict where BIM will stand 5-10 years from now is as the speaker Eric Kuszewzki from our previous mentioned the learning curve for BIM is very high for the architects and the engineers in the field today. Therefore it is difficult to predict how quick that learning curve can be decreased in the future before BIM becomes main stream for projects.  

Based on an article I read “BIM’s future up in the cloud” by Dominic Thasarathar, I believe the learning curve for BIM will decrease in the years to come. One of the reasons the learning process of BIM has been so slow is for the roadblocks consisting lack of computing power and high cost of hardware which sets many limitations for training in BIM. So the article talks about how BIM is in the works of major integration with cloud computing to turn these roadblocks into “sidesteps”. BIM’s integration with cloud will able its users to use BIM from an average computer from any location on the earth with unlimited computing power to make BIM accessible to wider range of users. Additionally more and more institutes, colleges, and universities are enforcing their scholars to use BIM software in their curriculum which is helping again to decrease the learning curve. For instance I as an architectural engineering student here at Drexel University am required to use Revit for design purpose and SAP2000 for structure analyses, both of the software are incorporated with BIM. So lot of investment and effort is being place in the architecture and engineering industry to switch over to encounter projects using the BIM process conventionally.

Thasarathar, Dominic. "BIM's future up in the cloud." BIM's future up in the cloud. 08 Aug. 2012. 29 Jan. 2013 <http://www.bdcnetwork.com/bim%E2%80%99s-future-cloud>.             

BIM Handbook Ch. 5

Chapter 5 in the BIM Handbook talks about BIM for Architects and Engineers. It explains the four main concepts of BIM related to the architect and engineers duties in a project of “Conceptual design, the integration of engineering services, construction level modeling, and design-construction integration”. There are multiple ways the concept of BIM can be incorporated by architects and engineers but the handbook tries to share efficient ways BIM has been used for different project already completed known to be successful. It all started with conceptual design being one of key steps when using BIM process during which crucial aspects of a building should be agreed upon such as orientation, appearance, structure, and basic building systems as a whole with everyone from the architect, engineers, contractors, owner, building manager, and similar important figures at the same table. The more that is agreed upon at this step and planed the more time that can be saved later into the project with less confusion throughout the project. Below is a chart presented in chapter 5 of the BIM handbook which shows the amount of time saved according to a project already completed using BIM.

Next BIM also plays a very important role when it comes to building design and analysis. For example during design a portal can be created for a project where all the files can be stored and multiple people working on the project can have excess to documents at the same time as others with constant updates being saved for others to view or use right away. Additionally with software like Microsoft Live Meeting and WebEx different members can communicate and have meetings from anywhere in the world saving tremendous time and making the flow of work really efficient. Also when it comes to analysis there are multiple programs to analysis different building systems such as ventilation, lighting, temperature control, energy usage, and so on which are mostly independent of each other. All these programs require common inputs before any analysis can be performed so except having to enter the same information into multiple programs a common file can be created with a format accepted by various different programs which can be easily imported saving time and also making sure the same inputs and factors are being assessed by different professionals for their individual expertise without any conflicts. More information on the importance of software while using BIM can be found in Rita's post where she talks about benefits of using 3D modeling programs such as Rhino, SketchUp, and more.

Then comes developing construction documents for contractors to use for construction is basically part of design and construction integration. This is where the architect and engineer can go on the project portal and easily compile construction drawings from the information which should be already there from the first two steps of BIM for contractors to use for construction of the project. Important part of this step is to make sure the drawings are detailed and well explained to speed up the construction process and increase the quality of work during construction. Overall for BIM to be efficient as explained above for any project the project managers and his crew need to have proficient skills in all the different programs which make the BIM as a whole. As Maria mentioned in her post that even thought software used in BIM are still new to most of the architects and engineers, they need to be implemented into more and more projects providing practice leading the workers in the field to proficiency which can results in firm to carry out full scale BIM processes for their projects. Not only will it save the firms time but also allow the firm's quality of work to increase as well.  

Eastman, Charles M. "Chapter 5: BIM for Architects and Engineers." BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. 149-206. Print.

3D Manufacturing Capabilities

3D Manufacturing, commonly known as “Addictive Manufacturing” in the professional world, according to me it is already in the main stream of manufacturing and professional world today. Also that it will main stream into the common world for all individuals within the next 2 to 5 years from now. Therefore there is no question about the future, 3d Manufacturing is already here today. “Addictive Manufacturing” can be simplified as being a process in which anything from a body tissue to a single family home can be designed on a 3D computer program then a functional realistic life size of that design can be printed as a final product. The technology of 3D manufacturing has been under exploration and research for decades and it has resulted in the creation of 3D printers for various types of materials and functions. When I was in high school few years back in 2009 I was fortunate enough to use 3D technology to print small parts such as stair cases and window frames for architectural models for class projects, so 3D printing is nothing new. Fortune 500 companies such as Boeing and General Electric are using the “Addictive Manufacturing” technology today to make complex parts out of composite materials being used in several of their final products. This technology has help create many small startup business such as ones which make custom accessories such as custom electronic housings, cases, chocolates, presents, and more in which buying a 3D printer eliminates cost of hiring workers, leasing or buying big warehouses for productions and so on. Another big impact addictive manufacturing has made is in the medicine world. Not only are these printers are able to make prosthetic such as leg and hip joints, but bio-medical engineering students across the street at University of Pennsylvania have been able to print out live blood vessel networks out of live organic materials which can be brought to life and be a crucial breakthrough for the medical world but also for human kind (upeen.edu). So far they have been able to create full organs such as a human bladder and human kidney. With such capabilities shortages at organ banks will be a thing of the past and many lives which are being lost today will be saved.

The topics mentioned above did not directly focus on architectural or the civil engineering field but as mentioned in my group members’ blog posts this innovation of 3D manufacturing can be used with materials such as concrete to develop full size architectural and civil structures as well. This can increase productivity and efficiency of projects significantly while cutting down on labor cost tremendously. 3D manufacturing is not main stream in this field as of now but with all the positive outcomes and results of research being performed at institutes such as USC it can be concluded the idea of 3D manufacturing for construction in field of architectural and civil engineering will be a common option in the next 5-10 years.

Information used in the research to compile the post above is based on credible sources listed below:

http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-improve-living-tissues-3d-printed-vascular-networks-made-sugar  ;Penn Researchers Improving Livening Tissues With 3D Printed Vascular Networks Made From Sugar; Evan Lerner; July 1, 2012    

http://www.csc.com/lef/insights/92142-3d_printing_and_the_future_of_manufacturing  ; Paul Gustafson; November 29, 2012

http://additivemanufacturing.com/basics/  ; What is Additive Manufacturing; 

Jalpesh Patel Intro.

Hi, my name is Jalpesh Patel a junior at Drexel University majoring in Architectural/Civil Engineering BS/MS. I have some knowledge with 3D modeling with AutoCAD Revit, Catia, and Inventor which I gain from my previous coop employers. Other than these softwares everything else we do in this course will be pretty much new to me. Therefore taking this class I plan on widening my knowledge of more software used for integrated building modeling which I have not used previously. Integrated building is when all aspects of the building are worked and thought about together from the beginning which can lead to better efficiency in all aspects of a project from design to operation of the final product.      

Architectural Engineering & BS/MS Students

Here is the list of Architectural Engineering students in the course.  This post is also used to create a "label" for each student so it's easy to label your posts later. – Updated 1/14/2013

Group	Last Name	First Name	Major
B	Barry	Nathan	Architectural Engineering
B	Ben-David	Tom	Architectural Engineering
B	Butler	Mitchell	Architectural Engineering
B	Cifligu	Elda	Architectural Engineering
B	Morrison	David	Architectural Engineering
B	Sawin	Michael	Architectural Engineering
B	Scanlon	John	Civil Engineering
C	Bregande	David	Architectural Engineering
C	Hindes	Brian	Architectural Engineering
C	Houde	Kayleigh	Architectural Engineering
C	James	Daniel	Architectural Engineering
C	Lancellotti	Jeanine	Architectural Engineering
C	Martines	Natasha	Architectural Engineering
D	Gonzalez	Maria	Architectural Engineering
D	Ng	Junwah	Architectural Engineering
D	Patel	Jalpesh	Architectural Engineering
D	Pauliushchyk	Margarita	Architectural Engineering
D	Tedesco	Matthew	Architectural Engineering