Course Reflections–Themes and Comments

Overview

Most of you were quite pleased with AE-510, liked the variety of topics and our focus more into the future than the present.  A number said it made a noticeable difference to their understanding of the profession and their career.  I couldn’t be more pleased at that outcome.

What follows are my comments on some topics that recurred in your posts.

More BIM

Seven of the twenty seven of you commented that you’d like more BIM, with a number of those saying that less focus on databases would be desirable to achieve that change.  In future versions of this course that may happen once we have the Digital Building concentration in place – that concentration will have a whole course on databases required.  Even then, though, I’ll probably retain some discussion of databases because they are such an essential tool in contemporary engineering.

Databases

As noted above, a number of you would prefer to have less emphasis on databases, with the reason being that you don’t see them as being relevant to your professional life.  Others appreciated the introduction to databases.  To the doubters I’d argue that you are going to be interacting with them throughout your career, and that therefore a working understanding of them is worthwhile.

Even the Workload

Several of you would prefer to even the workload in the courses by not having several assignments due in a week while other weeks have little or no work due.

My logic for this current arrangement is that having a week with little due allows you to look ahead and prepare future work.  Some liked that.  I’ll continue to ponder it.

Staying Aware of Technology

A number of you commented that staying aware of technology, an aspect of life-long learning, was important and that you appreciated the course for that reason.  I certainly believe that’s the case and am happy that some of you agree.

Final Class Meeting - Plan

In the final class you’ll work with the presentation groups assigned here.

Here’s the outline for the class including a link to the class survey I’d like you to take before the end of the class

A2b–Database–Grading Comments

Overall Comment

This assignment went quite well overall, with most of you understanding and appreciating the purpose.  Below I’ve addressed several issues that came up repeatedly

Planning

• Many of you realized the value of what Dr. Song emphasized, the importance of planning your database design in advance.  It’s just like a building – adding an elevator after the fact is MUCH harder than in the design stage.

Using Record ID Fields

• In my comments I referred a number of you to a post I thought I’d made (but now cannot find) about common problems with the first database assignment.  This had to do with the frustration that Access automatically assigns a number to a field that is identified as a “primary key”.  Using a primary key value for a particular record can thus be a problem if you delete it and think you’re recreating it – there’s a new primary key number which is NOT what you had before.  The trick is to not delete and recreate the same record OR do not use primary keys in “drop downs”, but instead use a descriptive field.

How To Enter Records Without Having to Look Up their key field.

• Access provides a method, one of number of “controls”, to produce a dropdown box in a form.  You can then see the value of a descriptive field in the dropdown menu, but Access actually puts the value of its primary key in the field.
• One or two of you experimented with this successfully.

Other Databases

• As I’d hoped, a number of you claimed to be quite interested in using Access further.  You should be aware that “serious” database people tend to sneer at Access (unjustly I’d say).  The fundamental problem is that large databases need to be used by many people simultaneously.  Access is not good at this.  If that’s what you need then you’re into the world of either a web-based database (probably PHP and SQL)  or a commercial product like those from Oracle.  These get more complex than Access quite quickly.
• Several saving graces are:
• the principles you’ve learned using Access still apply
• The SQL language that underlies Access is used throughout the relational database world.
• You can actually connect to large SQL databases using Access.

Term Project Comments

Overall Opinion

With some happy exceptions your work in these term projects did not represent the best of what I think the class is capable. In too many there were a variety of structural problems or a lack of focus on an “intelligent building” issue in any depth.  There was one unfortunate instance of plagiarism and several in which what was submitted bore only a tangential relationship to the topics of the course.  Below are my comments that address some of these issues.

Good

There were several papers that II read with great pleasure because the authors had either addressed the topic of which I was ignorant and related it clearly to the intelligent building concepts, or had taken some aspect of the intelligent building concepts and considered it in detail adding their own experience or projections.

Sad

Too many of you produced reports that had long introductions that outweighed the major substance up the topic. Others put together a number of different topics but in no greater depth than we had considered in class and without any significant additions.

Report Structure

One of the greatest disappointments was that many of you don't seem to fully grasp the ingredients of a good technical paper. Besides the obvious need to use appropriate language and to include citations for any assertions or quotations used there is a fundamental structure that is commonly expected. That structure is, to oversimplify for the sake of exposition:

• Introduction – Usually states the main idea of the paper to prepare the reader for what follows – 10% of length
• Main Body – Background, discussion of the elements of the main idea, description of how the main elements interact, consideration of difficulties with the main idea and possibly future work. – 80% of length
• Conclusion – Restatement of main idea and how it has been “proven” in the main body – 10% of length.

Intelligence and Green

A number of you addressed the topic of Intelligence vs. Green in one form or another.  I would argue that these two concepts are not inherently similar, although intelligence can often be used in service of developing a green building.  As I said to one group (edited):

You have written a paper which certainly meets the expectations of the assignment. What follows is an opinion that I hope you will consider as you move forward.

I would argue that by accepting the definitions of intelligence and green that you use in this paper you have automatically produced more of an overlap than is necessary. In particular there is no inherent reason why intelligence has to be used to produce environmentally friendly results. It can equally well be used to produce drama or luxury or general excess as opposed to environmentally friendly and indeed is used that way today. In that sense it's rather like the computer, a tool that can be used for multiple purposes ranging from enhancing a green lifestyle to killing people using autonomous drones.

Week-9–Plan for Class This Week

We’ll be using the entire class for an exercise to try and bring together everything we’ve studied this term.  Each grooup (A-E) will pick a building consider the appropriate technologies to use at each stage of the life cycle of the building.  You’ll develop and give a presentation about that “story” to the whole class.

Here’s the presentation that gives the organization for the class.

• It may develop some up to the start of class.

Groups for Week-10 Presentations

Here are the groups for the presentations in Week-10. 

I suspect that some project titles will have changed so don’t be worried if that’s the case.  I attempted to put teams with related topics together, but had to balance that with roughly equal numbers.

Group	Projects
M	#1 - integration of Revit and a structural analysis program - Krall #10 - Autodesk Storm and Sanitary Analysis - EPA SWMM Comparison - Alvarado Bastidas #7 - BIM Model of Elementary School of the Future - Houde #8 - Revit project - Wang, Li
N	#13 - Green vs. Intelligent Buildings - Mantua SD - Butler, Haddad, Ng #15 - Green Roofs - Bregande #16 - Green Roofs - Vazquez #2 - Intelligent and/or Green - Carpenter, Gulbenkian
O	#14 - Robotics in Construction - Hindes #3 - Robotics in Construction - Gonzalez, Cifligu, Gonzalez #5 - socio economic impact of the future use of robotics in construction - Meraz
P	#11 - sensor databases in a Building Management System - James #4 - sensors as a progressive way of building interaction with its surroundings  - Lancellotti, Martines, Pauliushchyk #6 - How do sensors availability can affect energy consumption in HVAC systems in buildings? - Ben-David, Morrison
Q	#12 - Equipment for energy efficiency of residences - Barry, Patel, Sawin #18 - Tedesco #9 - Philadelphia Row Home Efficiency Renovations (Green Vs. Intelligent) – Scanlon

Each team should bring paper copies of their presentation in sufficient quantity so that each person in your group can have a copy to follow along.  I suggest printing them out four slides to a page to save paper.

The plan in class is the following:

1. Each group will present to each other – using either a laptop you bring or the paper copies
2. Each group will choose one project to present to the entire class, with the other group members being prepared to explain why it was selected.
3. The selected Team will present to the entire class using their PowerPoint – 8 minutes max
4. The class will vote for extra credit for the “best” project in the following categories
   1. Most intriguing presentation
   2. Most technically competent
   3. Best use of “intelligent” technology