Week 5 Blog Post - Project Outline

Term Project Outline

Schedule:

            Week 5

                        Submit project outline

                        Learn basics of Dynamo

                        Write a simple pseudocode

            Week 6

                        Create Revit model of building and HVAC system

                        Create appropriate Revit families

            Week 7

                        Use Dynamo to place light switches next to doors

            Week 8

                        Use Dynamo to calculate HVAC pressure drops

            Week 9

                        Finetune, problem solve, troubleshoot

                        Submit project and project reflection

            Week 10

                        Final presentation

Description:

            Starting in week 5, we will begin to learn the basics of Dynamo. Neither of us have previous experience with the program so we are both learning it from the very beginning. Week 5 will be used to familiarize ourselves with what the program can do and ways to use it efficiently.

            Since this project will require us to have a Revit model, we will use week 6 to create this model. While we both have used Revit before we feel that spending a whole week on the model and the HVAC system will allow us to get the model done and overcome any roadblocks we run into. We will also use Revit to create families that we will need for this model.

            Weeks 7 and 8 are where the bulk of the Dynamo usage will take place. We decided to work on the two Dynamo tasks sequentially rather than simultaneously so that we can one task fully completed rather than two tasks in progress. We decided to attempt the light switch task first as we feel that this would be more representative of the depth of what Dynamo can do.

This project idea was inspired by the talk given by Kayleigh Houde in week 2. I have been self teaching myself various coding languages outside of the classroom as I am interested in being able to code and program moving forward. I feel that there are ample opportunities in the AEC industry to create programs that automate menial tasks that could be completed much quicker with a few lines of code. There are plenty of bookkeeping tasks that could be automated in this way. I did not think that programming could be used within Revit and in the actual building models until Kayleigh gave her talk. Now that I am aware of that capacity I am very interested in learning how to do so. My overall career goal is to help to make things more efficient wherever I work by employing either traditional programming or visual programming.

To Yicheng Li
I am very interested in seeing the end result of your project. Your preliminary design is well done and I am sure that as you undergo this project it will improve. I also think that this kind of project is invaluable as a learning experience.

To Albert Hanan
Hey Albert, I think that your project will be very interesting. I am excited to see the outcome of your building. I have not taken AE 390 or 391 yet so your project will be a good sneak preview of what I can expect to see in those classes. I am very interested since you said you will be going above and beyond what that will look like.

To Kunlun Ren
I am interested in seeing what you come  up with in regards to the use of BIM in healthcare. I think that there is much potential in the uses of BIM in healthcare. The benefit being that BIM allows for interconnectedness within a building. Healthcare would really benefit from something like that.