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:

B6 - Course Reflection

Throughout this course, there were very interesting topics brought up that, in some way, are relevant to either what many of us plan on doing or connected to what we’ve learned about so far at Drexel. I really enjoyed how many of these topics weren’t brought up or included in other classes but are still important to discuss as they are relevant to what we will be getting into with our careers. One thing about this class that I found to be the most useful was bringing in the guest lectures- I think this is something that’s often overlooked in many classes, but having people who do the things we talk about in the class for a living gives us the opportunity to see what they do (and what we can do) and ask questions if it’s something we also can see ourselves doing. I know we had quite a few guest lecturers come in, but I would have been happy to see more as well. I think they bring something unique and all have different points of view, and especially in a class where we have this floating idea of what the future of design/technology/etc. will bring, hearing other professional opinions on that topic was interesting.

One of the topics in this class that I found the most interesting was Revit and BIM. With his being the way most of the industry is moving, I think it’s very important that we get some sort of introduction to it. That being said, I wish there was a lot more time (in all honesty, a full course) that talks about Revit and adds in learning the idea of BIM even more. My co-ops have been a little bit different from most engineering co-ops as I have not had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in design programs like Revit or AutoCAD. I feel like this has held me at some sort of disadvantage when it comes to what many (and most) Civil Engineers are able to do. Having Professor Mitchell twice and him including the Revit introduction has helped me remember the program, but also continue to learn from it. I also think it was great to include the topic and an assignment on databases, because not everyone has the opportunity to learn about how useful they are. I’m currently taking a databases class because of my concentration, but because it is in the College of Computing and Informatics, it’s not geared as much towards engineering students and specifically how engineering students can utilize databases. Having this additional topic helped with my understanding of databases and how much they beneficial they are. I wasn’t expecting to get a lot out of the class, simply because it seemed like more of a “what could happen” continuous discussion, but the assignments, blog posts, and the guest lectures helped everything become more relevant and interesting. After graduation, I plan on working in construction management, which is another reason I wasn’t sure this class would help, but this class really tied in so many different subjects (including construction) and made me think just a little bit more about where the industry is going and how it will change going forward with all of this technology.

COMMENTS:

Maalik Kaptue – I totally agree that the sensors and robotics portion of the class was super interesting. That’s really what pulled together the topic of Intelligent Buildings with construction and engineering, which is one of the things that peaked my interest. I also had a co-op with the city, and after this class, I’m beginning to think a little bit more on how the future of technology will change how different sectors such as the Streets Department are run.

Hailey Ihlow – I also agree that the classroom setting was not conducive to how the course was set up to run. It’s unfortunate we ended up in the room, but I think the class was able to work the best it could given the environment. I also agree how this was a really nice change of pace from the other CIVE based classes – it’s nice to have it more discussion-based courses and especially for seniors, it provides more of an opportunity to consider everything that may happen in the future.

Jenny Fretta – I think it’s great that the different topics and assignments included in this class helped you in many ways, like senior design and your future career. The different subjects makes you think about how this fast-paced technology is changing our field so quickly and what’s the best job to get into that can still be around in a couple of years, as opposed to eventually being done through AI. This class also made it interesting to think more about what the future holds, which is fun.

B6: Course Reflection

During this course we learned about a multiple technologies including BIM programs, AI applications in construction, and studied concepts about how technology with advance in the future. The most significant assignment for me was the group project in which Samantha and I studied how Dynamo could be useful in our senior design project's Revit file. We tried to automate how the rooms where number, how to count elements in our file, and how to code the occupancy throughout the spaces. This was a really good way to practice, especially with the tutorials we followed. I think the same concept applied for the assignment on Microsoft Access because we had a guide of what to do but were able to make it our own and learn the program through the process of trial and error. Since my major is digital building systems I feel that learning these programs will help me save a lot of time when creating drawings so that my time can be spent on more detailed items rather than tedious/repetitive things.

I also really enjoyed the group activities and discussing our ideas about what technology would be like in the future for our weekly blogs. Although a lot of the time we had goofy answers and over exaggerated, it made us be able to think of really creative ideas and made the class really fun. I think that allowing us to be imaginative and slightly unrealistic with our ideas at first lead us to research into topics that weren't actually that far off. For example, my groups underwater data center started off as a fun idea and then when we really researched it we discovered that - although its expensive- it's very possible and Microsoft has been developing that technology.

My biggest takeaway from this course was that technology is not as far away from the advancements that people may believe to be unrealistic. Concrete blocks are being 3D printed, BIM technologies can help predict how outdoor conditions will effect a buildings indoor qualities, AI systems and sensors are monitoring conditions within buildings to keep them more consistent than ever, and robot dogs are doing back flips. The possibilities are endless but it is also our responsibility to make sure what we create is safe. I hope to apply these concepts to my career by being able to connect smart devices in a building to a network in order to make a cohesive controls system within a building to help regulate and monitor conditions from a phone (ex: Nest for heating and cooling).

Blog Post 6: Course Reflection

I did not have much of an idea of what the class would be like, but I am happy with what I got out of it. I enjoyed the fact that there was a wide variety of topics, especially ones that I did not know much about. I knew about Revit and Building Information Modeling, but I had not taken classes that discussed sensors, robots, or AI much at all. It was very useful to broaden my understanding of what goes into intelligent building and where future technology is headed.

I have a lot of experience with AutoCAD, but barely any experience with Revit. The Revit assignment was very helpful in getting me familiar with the program and the step-by-step instructions, as well as the video walkthrough, was very helpful. I would have liked a second part to this assignment that walked us through using Dynamo as well. The sensor database assignment was useful as well, both in creating a database in Access from scratch and from trying to find data on different sensors.

The lectures and videos on 3D printing, robotics, and AI were all very interesting to me. I had already seen some of the technology that was shown because of my personal interest, however, I had not been keeping up with the new developments. Being able to automatically 3D print buildings and other structures will cause drastic changes in our current infrastructure.

I enjoyed the guest lectures, especially Kayleigh’s because I had never heard of visual programming before. I had been thinking about looking for jobs in BIM so it definitely got me curious when she said, “BIM is dead.” However, this sent me down a path from Building Information Modeling to Visual Design and Construction to visual programming and generative design. Generative design was the topic of my project paper and I learned a lot about it.

Overall, this class was very helpful, and I will use what I’ve learned throughout my career. The discussions and blog posts taught me to research new technology and think/talk about what changes will occur. It is important to learn about future technology and stay ahead of it or else you will be left behind. 


Comments:
To Sean Reifer
I am jealous that you did your project on Dynamo. It was something that I wished the Revit assignment went into. I can learn it on my own, but as you mentioned, it is more challenging to work through it on your own. A video walkthrough detailing exactly what you are trying to accomplish is very helpful in learning quickly.

To Nick Maloney
I agree that we learned about a lot of different topics, but did not have enough time to go in depth with each of them. It was definitely useful to get some information from the various topics, but there are some topics that I wish we went into in more depth. I believe the idea of the project was to allow us to pick what topic we wanted to learn more about during the course and do our own research which worked well.

Yicheng Li
I also learnd a lot of new things about 3D printing, sensors, and databases. I agree that the blogs helped us learn about something new and write about them almost every week as well as read other people's findings. My project focused on generative design which could become a problem when it comes to reducing or eliminating certain jobs. However, I believe some jobs will remain and their tasks will be altered and some new jobs will be created due to the changes within each industry.

B6 Course Reflection

As other students have mentioned in their own course reflections, now is the time to reflect on what was learned and discussed in AE 410 and how I can take my knowledge and put it to good use in my future career. A common theme among some of the students is that this course was not what we had originally expected. As a mechanical engineering student, I really did not know what to expect out of an AE course. I can say now that I am extremely happy I participated in this class as I was exposed to material with which I would never normally have any experience.

When coming into this “Intelligent Buildings” course, I fully expected to be doing calculation work on buildings that compensate for earthquakes or on smart HVAC systems. I was pleasantly surprised and appreciative that this course took a more overview objective approach to intelligent building operations. I also really enjoyed the structure of the course that integrated guest speakers and allowed for group discussion among students.

In terms of an impact on my profession, I do not see myself using intelligent building course material directly in mechanical engineering. I am hoping to enter the world of automotive design, so intelligent buildings just don’t fit in there. At the same time, though, some parts of this course can be held close to heart when moving forward. For example, a big part of this course was the discussion of sensors and databases. Mechanical processes always incorporate some sort of sensor usage, so managing those sensors and logging large amounts of data in a database is very helpful for information management. In this course we also discussed the idea of robotics making its way into the active work force in building design and construction. As we know, robotic systems are used quite often in automotive manufacturing. At some point I will encounter work along side a robot, and I’m more open to that idea now that I’ve learned a bit about the nature or robotics in this course. 

Going forward in my career, I will be open to the idea of ever-changing technology, just as we’ve learned that the AEC industry is experiencing constant change in technology. I have a better sense of what is the industry “norm” and I have learned to understand why certain processes change over time. This course has prepared me to “think outside the box” when it comes to overall engineering purposes, and I’m glad I decided to take AE 410 this term.