B7 Final Blog Post - Reflection

I came in with no knowledge of BIM tools at all. I never realized that the Revit I have been using is part of the BIM family prior to my first class in AE 510.

When I take a look back at my first blog post of my expectation on this course, it says,

"My expectation is to get some proficiency in BIM and more chances of teamwork-driven projects. I will be more than happy to learn from classmates."

I now could be very certain to say that I have definitely achieved this initial goal. By walking through the term project, I have gained a lot of proficiency in using Revit. In this project, our team modeled the ICA Boston. The building is characterized with a grand stadium stairs with angled orientation, furthermore, there is an opening in this grand stairs. These two features are hard to model and yield to sophisticated techniques in the Revit. In order to finish these features, I have even paid for some tutorials in addition to videos in Youtube. As a result, not only did we manage to model the project, but we also learned this technique ultimately.

Aside from modeling architectural components, I had chance to touch based in structural modeling. I have gained experience in architectural modeling utilizing Revit in other courses but never did I start modeling structural. The real challenge is when you started to model structural components, you have to integrate with the architectural design in the consideration that dimension or spacing would have to meet the building code, and this is when I found errors in measurements. They are very obvious when you switch to 3D view that you can see the trusses stick out from the facade easily. We cannot place the columns or trusses in wherever we are in favor of.

In addition, by introducing the idea of database, I really opened up my mind to various categories that I may have been ignorant of, since I could have assumed that they are irrelevant to BIM. Also, articles on Evernote broaden my horizons significantly. They inspired me to think about the issue of AI and intrigued me to have an extensive research on AI and how revolutionary it will be.

Last but not least, I found the lectures brought by guest speakers very inspirational. I have taken in considerable amount of information every time I listen to it. It is enlightening to get their advices so that I know how I need to stretch myself to fit in this profession. In addition, these speakers are also representatives from their firms. It is a great chance to discover the qualities of employees they pursue.

Looking forward, I would love to apply what I learned in Revit to my coop or extend it to future career. This is not only because I want to gain proficiency, but also I think Revit or other BIM tool would be the future of architectural design. Also, I would explore more in AI and how to integrate it into intelligent building.

Personally speaking, I like this course and it is very inspirational for Architectural Engineering students.  I truly think this course is one of the most authentic architectural courses that I ever had.

Comments

Grigorious: I totally understand your gravitation towards design and how it somehow sheered to Civil design. I had this struggle between Civil and AE earlier, probably because I have been confused what AE really does and I did not find a true answer to this puzzle. After I took several AE design classes, I got this all figured out and determined it be my pursuing career.

Lenny: I came in with the same assumption that this will be somewhat talking about highly intelligent houses programmed by central computer. Nonetheless, it does turn out to be essentially like what I presumed. I love your presentation on Bullit Center and I can see it would be the trend for future building. I have always wanted to design a green building. Thank you for bringing in this presentation.

Drew: I agree that database would play a more important role in the future and it is very essential to get familiar with SQL, as one of the major language used in database. Also, I love how futuristic scope this course present to us, I also liked the presenter from guest speech and they really brought in some very interesting perspective on the AE field now.

Week 6 Group A Blog Post - Relational Database Theory

According to Wikipedia, the definition of Relational Database is “is a digital database whose organization is based on relational model of data, as proposed by E.F. Codd in 1970. ” [1]. There are many important terms associated with relational database theory. For instance, relational model is a database model “based on first-order predicate logic.” [2] In the model, all data are represented by tuples (rows) and attributes (columns).  A tuple is an ordered list of elements while attribute can be renamed to any characteristic information (ie. Name) and categorizes all the same features.  Here is an example database according to Relational Model:

Figure 1: An example database 

In the relational database, each entity is given with a unique key that can be linked to when used in other table as well. By storing this key into another row in a different table, the information of this entity can be represented and declared in other table. This is particularly helpful when a massive variety of data is stored, the user can still find the data they want by letting the system find the links (aka. relation) between different data. As a result, “data relationships of arbitrary complexity can be represented using this simple set of concepts” as Codd argued. 

The official descriptive definition of this kind of relation is “procedural relational algebra query language or its equivalent declarative relational calculus”. [3] . Below is a demonstration of the expression of relational algebra describing the how this relation works in database:

Figure 2: Example of Relational Algebra 

As society develops, more and more data are being stored in various kinds of database. The invention of relational database is particularly helpful in regards with the pratical need for efficient manipulation of large amounts of structured information. 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_model

[3] Elements of Relational Database Theory, Paris C. Kanellakis, 1989

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