Rob Snyder's Blog

blogging for multiple audiences

Rob Snyder — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 02:17:34 GMT

Earlier this year I started blogging also at another blog site. A smaller audience than here on Bentley Communities, but just another channel, and so far there have been readers from 64 countries.

Thank you for reading my posts!

Here is the other blog: http://dagsljus.wordpress.com/

Intelligible Information Environments

Rob Snyder — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 02:48:22 GMT

This youtube recording http://youtu.be/kQPxPF-lf5I is a presentation of recent research work from Bentley’s Applied Research Group.

This is the essence of drawing (a fact forgotten, simply because of our familiarity with it)

Rob Snyder — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 03:43:02 GMT

new blog post:

This is the essence of drawing (a fact forgotten, simply because of our familiarity with it)

DIRECTIVE ENVIRONMENTS (POINT CLOUD)

Rob Snyder — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 03:39:45 GMT

a new blog post

DIRECTIVE ENVIRONMENTS (POINT CLOUD)

Goodbye LOD, Hello (again) location-specificity

Rob Snyder — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 03:34:00 GMT

Please see my new blog post: Goodbye LOD, Hello (again) location-specificity

Dagsljus (Daylight)

Rob Snyder — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:49:00 GMT

I have a second blog (in addition to this one), just another way of communicating with others about topics of interest: http://dagsljus.wordpress.com/

relationship of drawings to models

Rob Snyder — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:02:00 GMT

Industry needs to begin to consider the general condition of the relationship of drawings to models..

The general condition is:

A model is an environment

A “drawing” draws one’s attention toward a location of accountable reliability, within an environment.

These two simple statements make very clear that, conceptually, drawings and models are inseparable from each other; one does not productively exist without the other. However in our common experience with drawings and models, they are separated from each other. This is worth consideration.

Drawings, as they have been known (for centuries), draw attention toward things within a proposed real environment (within the world as environment) while of course omitting that environment. Drawings omit the environment, and this omission is first among the techniques of drawing. Omission of the environment permits a narrowing down of attention and its focus. The result of the omission (of the environment) is a drawing in the abstract. What remains after omission of the environment is an author, a viewer, and a focused attention.

What then of the environment? What of the model as environment? Any of us familiar with the hours, weeks, and months invested in the creation of models understand very well the limitations of the idea that a model is to serve as a representation of the totality of an environment. First, the effort required for a modeling of totality is exhausting and seems, despite some partial exceptions, never quite reached. Those of us who have spent many years of a career in pursuit of reaching it know the limits of this thinking better than those who have not attempted it and have not encountered the practical limits, repeatedly.

However, let’s not let practical limits inhibit our thinking. Brushing aside practical limits, imagine that some soon available automation will make it possible to model total representations of an environment. What then? Will we then have arrived at the point we had been seeking? Where have we been trying to go? It is worth thinking about this in comparison to the conventional communication device of drawing. When drawing arrives at its destination what is found is an author, a viewer, and a focusing of attention.

These (author, viewer, and focus of attention) are tenacious to an extent that they are not going to fade away as the capacity for a totality of environmental modeling increases. That is to say, quite directly, that the idea that industry is in the midst of a transition away from drawing and toward modeling is an idea that is untenable conceptually, and therefore (and even by common observation) of little use practically. This does not mean, of course, that meaningful progress is not coming our way. It simply means that by looking closely at the terms in use (drawing and modeling), we can learn to ask better questions, and by doing so arrive at a better place.

Rather than moving away from drawings, and toward models, where we are going is toward an environment within which an author may draw attention toward things. This opens up rich possibility for the idea of environment, and the idea of what it means to draw (attention toward, within an environment). We are only just beginning.

www.youtube.com/watch

Frontier

products

tangerine

Rob Snyder — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:03:04 GMT

Where I’m from, trees bear fruit. A tree is an environment (a combinant environment by the way). Within that kind of environment are nodes at which things are combined and transformed in ways that make them specifically useful and close at hand. Such an environment is considered to be productive. tangerine tree

Models, as we have known them, are environments, and not particularly productive ones. That is changing now. We understand the difference between a barren environment, and an environment that will yield the nodes at which things are combined and transformed in ways that make them specifically useful and close at hand for work.

Please see: http://bit.ly/UsliAP

A start of things

Rob Snyder — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:23:00 GMT

A drawing defines a location of reliability within an environment, but it leaves out the environment. So it is insufficient.

A model defines an environment, but omits designating locations of reliability. So it is insufficient.

Either of these on its own, is no longer sufficient. Communication must be elevated and made clearer. The two must be combined, just as sound and film were combined in the 1920s. Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, at the time in 1926 said it was a bad idea and would never be commercially viable. He was wrong.

In 2012, the combination is the start of much more to come.

A frontier in visual communication (recap and concept: define locations of reliability within environments)

Augmented reality for building construction (drawing-augmented models augment…the environment)

Subsurface excavation (a visual transformation)

These are a starting point for many things underway.

A new kind of documentation

Rob Snyder — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 09:27:00 GMT

The blog post hereincludes:

background discussion of visual media describing essential characteristics of drawings and models (as media)
an introduction of new forms of combinant environmental media that keep intact within them the provision for the authored directive visual statement
links to research developments extending the concept further

Any evaluation of modeling should now include an assessment of what modeling can do for the clarity of documentation. Abstraction is a significant problem. Construction firms often report that deciphering the meaning of abstract drawings represents a very large amount of time, and some even say it is their firm’s greatest challenge. Interpretation no longer need be as difficult:

A new kind of project documentation (please see the blog post above) did not exist before 2012, and is only available from Bentley. It makes it easier for you to create documentation that is clear and understandable. It makes it easier for you to see what you are doing, understand what you are designing, and control the scope and completion status of your drawings and models. Likewise it makes those drawings and models more useful for construction firms. Now they can more easily, correctly, and thoroughly interpret and understand your visual communications. It saves you time and money, and it saves them time and money.

Deliver drawings in models instead of either one alone. If you were in the movie making business you would want to author and deliver movies with sound and picture integrated and synchronized. Do the same now with drawings and models, and enrich both media.

A frontier in visual communication

Rob Snyder — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 20:03:00 GMT

Visual media. Let’s talk about it. In the design and construction professions we are familiar with the visual media commonly used: drawings and models. Of course we also understand that visual media extend beyond architecture, engineering, and construction. Recent innovations now appear to open a new frontier of potential significance not only in the design and construction professions, but also for visual communication media generally.

To look forward into a visual media innovation frontier, we first have to look back into the past. Let’s take the common forms of media, drawings and models, and describe them.

Drawings

Drawings are visual representations that depict, typically, specific locations in a proposed (or actual) physical thing. So for a building, or a roadway, a tunnel, a bridge, or a power plant, a typical set of drawings is composed of a finite number of authored directive visual statements. These represent the finite number of specific locations about which an author has chosen to make visual statements. These are selected statements that are representative of the entirety of a project, while most of the locations in a project in fact are not drawn. This last point really comes close to the essential nature of the medium of drawing. Authorship is applied only to the set of locations that the author selects. The selected locations are drawn, and the rest of the locations are not drawn. They are in a sense, discarded. While it sounds obvious, stating the obvious does not diminish the importance: drawings that are not drawn need not be certified as correct and complete by the author.

This kind of stark authorship clarity is the strength of drawings. But drawings have stark weakness too. Their weakness is lack of clarity during interpretation. Builders use drawings – they read and interpret them. Doing so, they are confronted always by the abstractedness of the medium of drawing. Drawings are like isolated picture puzzle pieces that are abstracted from the entirety of the completed picture puzzle (see figures 1 and 2 below). For any picture puzzle it is indeed difficult to thoroughly and correctly understand the meaning of any puzzle piece without being able to see the puzzle pieces around it. Abstraction is a significant problem. Construction firms often report that deciphering the meaning of abstract puzzle pieces (drawings) represents a very large amount of time, and some even say it is their firm’s greatest challenge.

figure 1 Bentley thanks Stanley Beaman & Sears Architecture and Nemours Children's Hospital for drawings and models.

figure 2 Bentley thanks Stanley Beaman & Sears Architecture and Nemours Children's Hospital for drawings and models.

This tells us something indeed important about our relationship to drawings. We tend to accept with regard to interpretive clarity, that drawings are as effective as we can expect. Our focus is not on interpretive clarity but on maintaining our clarity of authorship, which takes priority - because we certify what we author; our liability is attached to what we author. This highlights again that we certify what we author, not what we don’t author. Selection of authored locations is concomitant with the discarding, or non-selection, of other locations. While this is not the way we usually think about things, it is instructive to think about this when considering the medium of models.

Models

Models are different from drawings in an essential way. A model represents an environmental totality. No locations are discarded and none can be discarded. Therefore authorship can no longer be confined to a finite number of directive visual statements representing a finite number of selected locations that are representative of a totality. In a model, totality is explicit instead of implicit. Explicit totality has profound effect on both authors and viewers, and we need to explore it.

Model authors

Given an author’s liability for her statements, from an author’s perspective, a model drastically extends the authorship burden. In drawings the burden is confined to a representative and finite set of visual statements. In a model the burden extends to the totality an environment. This extended burden has a particularly severe effect when considering the liability that authorship always carries with it. Liability exposure is greatly increased, and this imposes a burden of completion over the entirety of a model, a burden which in practical terms is untenable. For evidence of this, consider a simple thought exercise. Estimate the amount of work hours required to complete a finite set of representative drawings. Now instead of that set, draw a larger set of drawings that omits no locations throughout the entirety of a project. For example, section and plan drawings, instead of being drawn at representative locations, will be drawn at 1 millimeter increments throughout the space of the project. Estimate the amount of time that will be required not only to draw so many drawings, but to review and certify them. Such indeed is the nature of modeling. The comparison is a fair one because an extreme drawing exercise like this indeed approximates the effort of modeling the entirety of an environment to completion, much like, as in calculus the sum of the areas of many small rectangles under a curve approximates the area under that curve. Or to put it another way, consider that every element in a model must not only be present, but must be correct throughout its entire expanse (individual elements can be geometrically complex within themselves), and further that all elements must exist; there can be no omissions if the intention is to certify completion.

Still the reader may object and ask, can the design team never review and certify an entire model? They can. Certification of an entire environment is possible, and does happen, in cases where the thing modeled is relatively confined in scope and relatively high in standardization. A typical steel fabrication model is a common successful example of a model that is entirely complete, so it is an exception to the rule. Compared to steel models, most modeled subject matter is not as confined in scope, nor as high in standardization in terms both of its components, and their assembly. Note, though, that even as an exception, the exception is partial because a steel model still also benefits from the media advancements we propose below.

Model users

Builders have no way of distinguishing between locations in a modeled environment that are certified as reliable, and locations that are not. With some partial exceptions, builders have no choice but to assume the model unreliable in its entirety. The reason is simple and seemingly intractable: models are context and information-rich environments that are composed of seemingly equal parts information and uncertainty. The uncertainty results from the lack of the capacity to discard locations other than those at which authorship is explicitly claimed; models fail to draw attention to the claimed locations and differentiate them from the unclaimed locations. The failure to differentiate puts the reliability of the entire model in doubt. Consequently, models are generally not used for the delivery of primary communication. Instead they are used only for: general orientation and design exploration, energy studies, analytical studies and planning. Certainly these uses are important, but to these we seek to add important and primary new uses.

Drawings in Models

Is the current state of drawings and models a permanent state? Will drawings always be clear about authorship but remain abstract and difficult in interpretation? Will models always be information-rich while remaining equally burdened with uncertainty of the most critical kind, uncertainty regarding the locations of definitive reliability? Is it possible to imagine a different kind of visual medium that amplifies the strengths of drawings and models (clarity and context, respectively) while mitigating their weaknesses (abstraction and ambiguity, respectively)?

We set this as a goal, and sought the possibility of a modeled environment that keeps intact within it the expression and the power of the authored directive visual statement, to increase the communicative power of drawing and model, statement and environment, and in 2012, Bentley delivers it. In Bentley V8i SELECTseries3 software, drawings are combined in-place into models, automatically. The result looks like this:

www.youtube.com/watch

figure 3 Bentley thanks Stanley Beaman & Sears Architecture and Nemours Children's Hospital for drawings and models.

figure 4 Bentley thanks Stanley Beaman & Sears Architecture and Nemours Children's Hospital for drawings and models.

figure 5 Bentley thanks Stanley Beaman & Sears Architecture and Nemours Children's Hospital for drawings and models.

figure 6 Bentley thanks Stanley Beaman & Sears Architecture and Nemours Children's Hospital for drawings and models.

This is a significant improvement for the two types of visual communication media in common use in the design and construction professions. When we can see the things around a drawing, we understand the drawing better. We are likely to understand it correctly, and more thoroughly, and more easily. We arrive at deeper insight, and this may even prompt us to think in different ways, to ask better questions about what we’re doing. Likewise the model is much improved, in an essential way. In the model we now clearly see the locations at which reliability is certified or claimed. The rest is context. The confidence of knowing the difference between what is reliable and what may not be reliable gives us the confidence to rely on those aspects that are reliable, instead of assuming everything to be unreliable. This gives what is needed then: a model can be the environment within which authored directive visual statements are both authored and delivered. A model is elevated into a primary communication role, serving the general purpose. The general purpose of drawing and modeling is always the same: to help us explore and see and understand what we are trying to do, and to help us communicate that in ways that can be understood, correctly, thoroughly, and easily.

Does this step forward signal an innovation frontier? The innovation represents a general principle that surely can be applied across a variety of types of environmental media, and across a variety of types of authored directive visual statements, many of which are yet to be discovered, while some have already been discovered. See Stephane Cote’s blog post on hypermodel augmented reality, and virtual excavation demonstrating new combinations of environmental media and new kinds of authored directive visual statements, supported by new kinds of visual transformations. A renaissance in media itself appears to come into view. Is this an overstatement? The coming years will tell.

Products

Northwestern University Symposium on Technology for Design and Construction

Rob Snyder — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:27:00 GMT

I am happy to say that I am presenting on the following topic at the second annual Northwestern University Symposium on Technology for Design and Construction (August 15, 16, and 17, 2012) http://techforconstruction.com/

“Hypermodeling”

Sometimes (or often) in human experience, familiarity with a thing tends to conceal what a thing really is, and what it may become. For that reason there can be significant reward in trying to look at things in new ways. When we ask, “what is a drawing?”, and “what is a BIM model?”, we can ask this conceptually with the belief that a search for what something is can lead to an understanding of what it can become.

In the case of drawings and models, have we become so familiar with them that “what they are” is hidden from us in such a way that we have difficulty imagining what they can become? Drawings have been with us for millennia. And certainly we are well and truly familiar with models as well, even in their more recent form: BIM models. It is interesting, in fact, that one of the primary functions of BIM models is that they are used to automate the production of drawings. We know this, but we don’t often go further; we don’t ask what drawings and models are.

For drawings, a useful conceptual interrogation is to ask, “what is drawn?” Drawings indicate their author’s “drawing-of-our-attention-toward” locations in a project. What is drawn, is one’s attention, toward something. An author chooses locations, then draws our attention toward them with graphics (automated or not) together with the author’s embellishing graphics and commentaries. The sum of these activities (a drawing set):

fulfills the author’s contractual obligation for visual communication,
is recognized legally as such, and
has its conceptual basis in the “drawing-of-attention-toward”

This tells us something about BIM. While BIM automates the production of a set of drawings derived from a model, that model is no replacement for drawings, and cannot be, because models (BIMs) generally do not demonstrate the above-mentioned quality of “drawing-attention-toward”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xAfZEK7hrY&context=C3659722ADOEgsToPDskJtsThIZxjLPm_r7ZYWQpni

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqLDk8gO1Yw&context=C3ee320bADOEgsToPDskLM3cDSEF5I798PyyloUG2I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYUHMT-gTR8&context=C35915f2ADOEgsToPDskJh-_ac9f0U0X7Mseu3rMVO

In his talk, Mr. Snyder will ask “What are drawings?” and “What are models?” and will attempt to clarify why the answer matters. He will then introduce the concept of Hypermodeling, Bentley’s solution to supply that “drawing-attention-toward” by augmentation, in-situ, in such a way that communicative effectiveness is elevated, along with its advantages over BIM. He will then show a few examples of its successful use (see youtube links above). Finally, he will talk about the future of hypermodeling, and make a parallel with some of Bentley’s latest research results related with hypermodel-augmented panoramas, continuing Bentley System’s efforts aimed at elevating the communicative capacity of media through a convergence: of evolving forms of environmental immersive media, and the conceptual basis of the medium of drawing itself, “drawing-attention-toward”.

We see next steps in the application of this concept including its continuation into other forms of environmental media.

One of our current research projects explores it this way: drawing-augmented models (hypermodels) become hypermodel-augmented panoramas (hypermodel-augmented reality). See this link: http://communities.bentley.com/other/old_site_member_blogs/bentley_employees/b/stephanecotes_blog/archive/2012/04/12/be-together-2012-sneak-peek-2-augmented-reality-and-hypermodeling.aspx

Hypermodeling videos on Bentley YouTube Channel

Rob Snyder — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:17:00 GMT

Four Hypermodel videos are on Bentley's YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xAfZEK7hrY&context=C3659722ADOEgsToPDskJtsThIZxjLPm_r7ZYWQpni

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqLDk8gO1Yw&context=C3ee320bADOEgsToPDskLM3cDSEF5I798PyyloUG2I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYUHMT-gTR8&context=C35915f2ADOEgsToPDskJh-_ac9f0U0X7Mseu3rMVO

presenting drawings in models

Rob Snyder — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:59:00 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q42DrHZl_I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K_nQGptF84

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_UldNIg2KQ

“describe BIM in 10 words (or less)”.

I think you can describe it accurately by looking at what it delivers.

Take as given the things that are said about work process (BIM process change), and look, for the moment, at the delivered result of the use of BIM tools.

The delivered result of BIM tools (and process) is:

A. A stack of drawing documents (plus some other documents). The drawing documents are no better at their intended purpose (communication) than any documents ever have been, although yes perhaps these are somewhat better coordinated than they otherwise may have been.

B. A 3D model that can be used for some specialty purposes (visualization, clashes, sequence animation, analyses..) but that otherwise is practically useless as a means of communication, as starkly demonstrated every time it is discarded as the project moves from design to delivery.

That B (a 3D model) automates some of A (drawings) is (always moving further toward the lighter side of) moderately interesting, but only from a purely technological perspective, because with regard to practical results, the automation of A from B does nothing to improve the communicative effectiveness of either A or B (communicative effectiveness is the primary purpose of drawing and modeling).

For something new (the reverse), automatically presenting all the drawing graphics (A) in the 3D models (B), please see the videos.

When you put the drawings in the models, both the drawings and the models are improved (as communication media) in rather obvious and practical ways:

The drawings are more thoroughly understood, more easily, more clearly.

The models are (for the first time) clear about the locations at which accountable statements are made, and what those statements are – the model is no longer speechless and ambiguous. The model speaks, and what it says is precisely what was said in the document set. As the model now for the first time makes clear the difference between locations that are reliable (and about which accountable statements have been made) and all other locations (that deliver context but that may not be reliable), the model may now serve as a reliable, accountable communication medium and need no longer be discarded as a matter of course as a project moves from design to construction or into operations.

STREAMING VIDEO:

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/2011_CHINA_HYDRO_BENTLEY_HYPERMODEL_8_11.wmv?h=3e82cee558bb4b3330dc1c774e1e5bbd NEW VIDEO

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/hypermodel01_8_11.wmv?h=37aef418f65da82a847eae989d5b7f3c

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/Hypermodel_iPub_8_11.wmv?h=de5b646b5e8f00bf37100b0124f05d13

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/Hypermodel02_8_11.wmv?h=52845d8dc804a1ed3016d436d9b267a8

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/Hypermodel03campuscity_8_11.wmv?h=f94788548f934cf292ef2a709105b8c3

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/Hypermodel04bridgeroad_8_11.wmv?h=06d8063c3d975bfd1fbadcd0cd0527ed

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/06Mar2010_8_11.wmv?h=65d2bf190f599693270e473677432d35

http://bentley.wmod.llnwd.net/a3822/o9/s/BentleyStream/Platform/2011_Model_Index_8_11.wmv?h=b0ccdaf56e1d65616c4deee181574791

Hypermodeling blog article (1)

\rob snyder

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