Course Reflection - Week 10 - Hope Lewis

When Professor Mitchell said that we would get as much out of this course as we put in he was very correct. I learned a lot about the parts of the course that interested me and I made a conscious effort to spend time working on those assignments, but the parts that did not interest me so much I did not try as hard to learn about the subject and only put in the bare minimum to complete the assignment. That being said most of the aspects of this course were very interesting. I especially liked the visiting speakers from the industry that showed how what we were learning in class would apply to our careers sometime in the future.

This course also showed me how quickly the industry is changing especially when it comes to BIM. Although BIM has its issues no one can deny that it is going to be a huge part of the industry in the future and it is worthwhile to have at least some experience with it before joining the workforce full time. In addition the exercise with Access is worthwhile to gain experience with a program that is not necessarily part of engineering curriculum but still very important to keep information straight when it comes to BIM design.

One of the more interesting things that I learned about during this class was 3D laser scanning. I wrote my final project on it and while I knew abstractly what it was before I did, I learned so much about it both from the speaker we had on it and from the research I did. As someone who is interesting in renovation and restoration of historical buildings this is a powerful tool I can use. The fact that an engineer can scan a building and have a 3D representation of it is a huge advantage to those who would like to restore it, since it is not always feasible to be near the building as it may be far away from the office or in a place that is not easy to get to. With the model it is possible to ‘be inside the building’ even from miles away.

Comments:

Ami Amegan: I’m considering getting a March too! Though I would likely go into design rather than construction.

Anthony Yau: I agree with what you said about the family assignment, it was difficult to figure out the tutorial but as I was doing it I was thinking, “wow, so this is how this works.”

Taylor Castonguay: I know what you mean about forgetting how to use Revit. There was a period of about nine months where I didn't touch Revit at all after a period of using it every day and it was hard to get back into it.