Blog 6 - Course Reflection

Being an Electrical engineer, it was interesting to have another view of the technologies being developed. Most of our exposure during electrical engineering courses has been related to production lines and product development. However, this course clearly showed me how the advancements in one industry can come to play an important role in other industries.

At the beginning of the course I learned a lot about BIM and how AI is being implemented I the development of buildings across the world. It is interesting concepts like 3D printed to be brought to a bigger scale in which strong structures are precisely created in incredible shapes and form. From the class, my favorite section was the applications of AI to properly choose the best design of a building based on the ambient characteristics. I normally see AI in more controlled spaces, but using the data from the environment to be process to determine the best model is impressive.

On the other hand, this course gave me a big number of tools and skills on BIM, with the little exposure I had from previous years. I tried the most to make my project required me to use BIM. It was interesting to share my knowledge in controls with my teammates while they constantly teach me how to properly create and present a project at Revit.

About my professional career, this course gave tools to properly understand other industries. As well as provide more awareness of current technologies and different applications. I grow personally since taking the course because now I constantly review news about technology advancements to be up to date to up and coming technologies that I am interested in.

To improve this course, I would like to see more advancements in other industries not related to construction. After taking the course, I have come to realize that any advancement can be adapted to any industry. I believe that if these are shown, most of the students will come with new ideas to implements in their projects. I have taken a lot of knowledge and advancements in construction that I will surely apply to my career as an electrical engineer.

Reflection

This course was interesting and not at all what I expected when I enrolled to take the class. I was expecting more quantitative work with more homework and quizzes. I was pleasantly surprised at the way the course was run. I like when professors have the attitude that you get out of the class what you put in. It helps ease the immediate tension and set the term up nicely. I also enjoyed how the course set students up to learn more about intelligent systems, not just the math behind them, but exploring the new technologies that exist.

Being a part-time employee for an engineering firm, we heavily rely on AutoCAD Civil 3D as our base for all of our work. However, the company as a whole is making the push to start training employees on Revit. The first part of the course, where we reviewed Revit and made a family group was highly beneficial and helped me on more than one occasion in the work place. Completing that project gave me more information on the system and allowed me to be a step further in training than the rest of my team.

Even though our team doesn’t use sensors and data collecting software, learning about Microsoft Access was an interesting exercise for a project. I had never used the program before, but the tutorials were more than sufficient in helping students figure out their way around. In the future, I will be looking out for this type of software across our projects.

The individual or group projects was also interesting because of the concept behind it. In most of the courses here at Drexel, a lot of projects are dictated to students without the choice of topics. It was a nice change of pace to be able to select a paper versus deliverable and then also the topic of the paper. It was also nice that the submissions were spread out throughout the course, making it easier to coordination and spreading of the workload. Overall, I really enjoyed this class and the way it was run.

Comments:

Blog 6 - Course Reflection - Calvin Tang

This assignment required students to think about what this course has taught them and how it might affect their profession and future.

When I started this course, I was one of the people who assumed that the main topics would focus on how we may improve the user-experience of the clients or building constituents using new technology after a building has been constructed. So I guess I’m saying that I thought we were retrofitting buildings with new technology. I did not think that we would start integrating these technologies at the conception of the building.

AI generating building designs is a fascinating idea that I believe will make things more complex. But complex isn’t a bad thing. It allows for unique ideas to become reality.

Automation of building construction will lead to job layoffs. I cannot be so optimistic as to hope that we can save every worker’s livelihood by training them in handling machines. Only the most adept will be retained and the others will be fired.

Sensors have been important for a long time. The advancement of sensors in accuracy of lifespan will be crucial to gathering more data that we can use to change design codes so that future buildings can perform better. We can also use sensors to make user-experience in the building such as lighting and IAQ much better.

I am studying architectural and civil engineering with a concentration on structures. I think having BIM assist in structural calculations is a good thing as long as we can still check the calculations. The super complex structures that architects want will need to push the limits of structural analysis and design. For that purpose, we may need to make use of FEM. Moving forward, I think I need to quickly pick up a structural modeling software and become proficient with it.

B6- Course reflection

This class served as a good introduction to some of the new and upcoming technologies. There were some things that I had already known about which made the classes fairly simple. This included things like sensors, computers and how they work. I still believe that they were necessary to show for those in the class with less exposure to them. I felt like the discussions we had on robotics were interesting but kind of hard to grasp at points. The reason being that there were things which I got really excited for because I could see them on the horizon but there were also robots which seemed so far in the future that they were kind of irrelevant. The things that I will take away the most from this class were the BIM and database projects. The work in Revit served as a good refresher and introduction to family creation. I could felt that the BIM lessons created a strong foundation to build off of in the future. On the other hand this was my first time working with databases and I really enjoyed the experience. There was so much to learn and although it could be frustrating at times it was a powerful tool that I know will be using in the future. Overall this class served as a good exposure to many different technologies and the amount that anyone learned was totally up to them.

Course Reflection

This course opened me to the possibility of BIM and its potential to thrive even more in the future. Prior to, I didn’t fully grasp the concept of BIM or Revit, specifically how these technologies vary (i.e. Revit and AutoCAD are two different programs with minor differences in how they work and what they are capable of) and how they could evolve to become more interactive tools that my generation can use to implement building design. Learning about the BIM revolution and hearing different opinions allowed for me to relate the context of this course to experiences which I will likely have in the future.

I believe that this course and what I have learned will impact my professional career. Just recently, I went to an interview in which the company was adamant that their employees be familiar with Revit and gave less concern to the use of AutoCAD. At the same time, different companies are integrating the technology at varying rates, with some of them still only hand drawing their designs. I can identify with these traditional companies in that they embody the type of work that I always envisioned myself doing as an engineer and architect lover. While I understand the benefits of artificial intelligence, I am not passionate about using it because it is daunting to place reliance on machines. I have concerns about the security of information, both about buildings and the users within them, which could be compromised by using this technology.

I still see value in the human experience of reviewing building design, and I initially had a hesitancy towards technology due to the stereotypical depictions of machines overpowering humans which are portrayed in mainstream media. However, this class has addressed my concerns with a levelheaded argument which suggests that humans and technology can work alongside one another to maximize building design, speed up construction, and accommodate clients more completely. The predictive or automated abilities of the technology are most exciting to me because as humans, we are always interested in having answers and planning ahead—this technology permits us to do just that. Furthermore, these technologies should and probably will be monitored by people to ensure that their performance is consistent with the reasons for which it was designed.

Prior to this class, I had no understanding of the vocabulary and theory behind the systems like databases or sensors that collaborate to act “intelligently.” I think it is useful for clients and architectural engineers, even though they are not designing artificial technologies, to understand how they communicate with each other in order to be able to identify potential problems with the technology in application. Also, standardization of this technology is imperative to its success—my generation will be in a position to watch this change occur and help perfect the process of using this technology in traditional engineering and design fields.

To improve this course, I would delve further into existing intelligent buildings. While the technique and theory behind configuring artificial intelligence technologies gives a baseline from which to study intelligent systems, I feel that the course lacked connection to building design and focused more on the function of various technologies that could be used in buildings or other areas.

Reflection

Intelligent Buildings was a course in which I could explore the future of my chosen profession. I enjoyed learning about problems I will be faced with in the future and how professionals and researchers are already working on solutions to said problems. Using technology to solve current issues also gives rise to other difficulties. Through this course, I’ve been taught about the responsibilities I have as a prospective engineer to solve these new problems because of their impacts on society and my profession.

Additionally, this course allowed me to explore some of my weaknesses and work on them. For example, I knew about Revit families before this course, but I’ve never made my own furniture family. I also got to work with databases which was something I wasn’t familiar with. I’m hoping I can use them in the future professionally, although right now, I don’t know where they would fit in. I was also happy to use Revit because it is one of my strengths and I like being able to improve on my current skillset. I was also able to practice my writing skills since we were able to get feedback from the professor on our assignments.

I took this course because I was interested in sensor technology and I believed I would be afforded the opportunity to explore sensors. For my final project I researched CO2 sensors in depth as I believed them to be a viable solution to a serious problem facing the building systems industry. After conducting research, writing a paper, and creating a presentation, I still believe that CO2 sensors are the solution for supplying air on demand. I think my paper and presentation are interesting to read and do a good job at explaining the current status of CO2 sensor technology and their use in everyday applications.

This course touched a lot upon things I have learned in other classes and my Co-Ops. I think a lot of the topics gone over in the class will help me professionally and add to my abilities as an engineer. It also helps to hear about things other students are working on so that we can learn from them as well. Instead of just one teacher we get multiple! I’m looking forward to seeing the presentations in class so I can learn more about some of the topics we have gone over in class and possibly some new topics.

In conclusion, this course is beneficial to people who are new to building systems because a lot of the information presented in the class is common knowledge to people who have been employed by firms who work on buildings over their co-ops. I believe that the project was well geared toward a wide audience because it gave students the opportunity to research something they cared about. All in all, I think the course was beneficial to most students and I think we all took away some important lessons. I feel better prepared for my future in the industry and it was exciting to learn about emerging technology.

Comments:

Robert Borelli: I agree that Professor Mitchell’s videos helped a lot with the assignments. I think that if he hadn’t posted them, I would have had a much more difficult time completing the assignments. Particularly the database assignment. I had a lot of difficulty with that assignment.

Hanyan Chen: I think you have a point with gearing the class more towards digital buildings students. However, I think this class could also be used for students beginning in architectural engineering since it explains and goes over a lot of topics students will encounter on their co-ops.

Laney Fries: I think your “what could happen” comment was spot on. I think that we could have narrowed the topics down to “what is currently happening” instead. We went over a lot of technologies that are arising but not what problems they will solve really.

Course Reflection

Before taking AE410, I only had a brief understanding of intelligent buildings that buildings can take conveniences to people, and the buildings in the future. AE 410 provide me a deeper understanding of buildings in the future, and a basic understanding of artificial intelligence, the sensor applications, database, and Revit Family function. As an architectural engineer student, the BIM software, Database, and some detailed AI applications will help my future career directly. In the future, more skills will be required in the construction field, and with BIM software skill will increase my probability to get involved into more projects than others.

In this course, the most impressive knowledge will be the BIM, and forecast of future buildings. For the BIM, at beginning, I thought BIM is just a software like AutoCAD which is only for drawings with special 3D models. However, after taking this 410 I learned the BIM is not a design software and it also is a software will take many benefits to both owners and subcontractors. Because by using Revit, it will help with shorten the cost, providing a more accurate schedule, and easier for subcontractors to knowing the best position to install equipements. Due to the characters of BIM software, designers can store and change the file easier than the hand drawings.

As we known, people always talks about the future buildings: what should the buildings look like; what kinds of things will be involved; and How human builds it. In 410, Professor Mitchell gives us a general forecast of the future buildings. In the future buildings, BIM software will be used to design; the robotics will be used during the constructions; sensors and AI application will be installed in the building to provide a comfortable, convenient and efficiency living or working place.  Additionally, in the final project, we did some searches online about intelligent buildings nowadays and in future which could be defined into three main characters: Performance-based definitions, Services-based definitions and System-based definitions.

I really enjoy taking this course, and I learn real and useful things from this course. However, there are also some points confused me. For example, when talk about the robotics has been used in the construction, we did not talk about the weak points of using robotics. For example, the costs of building robotics, the energy consumptions, and how should we replace the human workers. Moreover, the BIM software should be talked more. Because nowadays, everyone uses computer and BIM really helps students in their career and professions.