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Showing posts from August, 2010

Thinking about 4D

It's been a great first week as a blogger, adding 15 followers, nice comments and references from other blogs. I am also very happy that the point I made in my first post about trying to meet people with same interests or chasing similar goals have already paid off! In the meantime Alistair from the office sent me a quick note that got me thinking: in the BIM community we generally talk about drafting tools that deal with drawings separately as "2D", and then the ones where all the information gets stored in a single model as "3D". All clear up to that. Then we get about 4D (time) and even 5D (money) to describe the advantages of meta-data and database capabilities in our beloved Building Information Models. But in modern physics there is a diferentiation between "Spacetime", where time and distance measurements are combined in a single manifold, in the Relativistic approach and multi-dimensional Euclidean space (which is the geometry we are taught

Genetic Design - Part 1: General concepts

In my second post I'd like to thank my friend and Blogging mentor David Light, who featured this space in his highly respected blog. I guess most of you got here through there, but if you landed directly here I highly recommend having a look at http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/ , packed with tips, news and tools for the BIM enthusiast. Enough said as introduction, let's talk about my current after-hours project. About 2 years ago I went to a conference on Genetic Algorithm applied to Design. In a room full of engineers, I saw some examples of Genetic principles applied to Air Conditioning system planning, lighting design, and some shy approach to layout planning. The tools they used were some Java and C++ applets, lots of spreadsheets with complex scripting and occasionally some diagrams. Despite many interesting things were said, I was left with the feeling that the Architectural Design implementation was one I would have liked to chase, eventually. If you haven't n

Welcome to "Under NDA"

So, I started a Blog. Last week after the office I went to the bar with the guys, and went on about another crazy side project, one of those that could change the world if ever completed. Robbie asked: "Do you ever get to write about these topics? If you did, how big the book would be?" He left me thinking... and triggered the big question: if I was to write at least a line on these wild shots into technology, interoperability, robotics, BIM, would anyone be interested? Maybe I will inspire or influence an ongoing investigation even trigger a new one, or get in contact with people that are dealing with subjects that drive my attention. I have to admit that I rarely push to conclusion these ideas, and quite often forget about them after some time. Maybe by keeping track of some of them I will be able to compile enough information to write a book (most likely the blog itself will be my only publication though!) The title is meant to be puzzling: Discussions held "Under