ArchiCAD Spring Academy 2011 Recap

Posted: May 29th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps | Tags: ArchiCAD 15, Artlantis, Rendering, Teamwork 2 | No Comments »

Daniel Dusoswa, Chairman of ACUA (ArchiCAD Users Association), forwarded me Ray Elysee’s recap of the 2011 ArchiCAD Spring Academy. After reading it, I am even more jealous of everyone who was there. I hope that in coming years I’ll be able to attend and that some of us users in North America will create similar events on this side of the Atlantic. I want to thank Daniel and Ray for this write up and I am really curious and excited for August 2011 (see below).

group photo, some had already left or disappeared into some bar.... so about 65% of the Spring Academy attendees here.

Building on the success of the ArchiCAD Summer and Winter Schools, the two day ArchiCAD Spring Academy in Pula, Croatia, organized by ArchiCAD Users Association and 3Dart, Croatian ArchiCAD and Artlantis distributor, emerged as another must attend symposium.

The Hotel Histria surrounded by a network of hotels on the outskirts of Pula with one of the best preserved Roman Coliseums on a peninsular overlooking the Adriatic provided a great venue with an abundance of good quality restaurants with welcoming and friendly staff.

The presentations and demonstrations in the programme was considerately organized with provision of 15 minute coffee breaks on the terrace between speakers and 75 minute buffet lunch just enough time to soak up the sun and the 45 delegates (up on last year) from wide variety of nationalities from Norway, Denmark, Italy, France, England, Ireland, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina to meet and get to know one another.

The Symposium got started on Friday 13th at 9am with a warm welcome from Marin Racic of 3Dart and opened with the launch of ArchiCAD 15 by Eniko Pauko from the Graphisoft Team, who promptly handed out a non disclosure document for us all to sign regarding Project X to be launched in Autumn 2011. All I can say at this point it involves a computer program and an iPad. – and no doubt some gaffer tape and a pair of concrete boots from some Graphisoft hit man should I say any more.

What I can reveal is ArchiCAD 15 will include a new dynamic shape tool and an improved roof tool which will be like manner to architectural and design students to articulate their ideas of organic shaped buildings but will become the dread of structural engineers in years to come when the are asked to provide calculations and stress bends. Other key features will be 3D navigation, additional library objects such as boats, medical and contemporary furniture together with an array of wind and solar objects. Ecodesigner has been expanded with tools to evaluate day light analysis as well as enabling various assessments. To address the issue of refurbishment ArchiCAD 15 has a new feature to enable building alterations to be highlighted on a single drawing for compliance with European standards. All exciting stuff and can’t wait for the new release!.

To conclude the Friday morning Andrej Markovic demonstrated how to collaborate IFC components in ArchiCAD with Structural Data program SCIA. Fabrizio Diodati presented the changes to ArchiSuite which now includes all 17 different products including GDL modeller ArchiForma.

The symposium really got into gear in the afternoon with Marin Racic demonstrating the use of HQ (high quality) Textures from Arroway in Artlantis. During this very informative presentation Marin explained how to reduce a 53mb HQ image file to 7.7mb and then through use of Photoshop to create a jpeg reducing the file size by a further 75%. Creating a new shader he explained the process of importing the image and formatting the settings.

Herbert Peter eloquently demonstrated embedding hotlinks and the advantages when producing repetitive room layouts, multiple storey layouts etc followed by Til Breton showing how to synchronize textures and fill in 3D with the ArchiCAD rendering engines. The presentation was supported by a hand out with a list of tips, explanations and demonstrated the advantages and disadvantages of internal, light-work and open GL engines.

A short coach journey in the evening treated the delegates to the excellent local culinary delights of the region and time to socialise, reflect upon the day and replenish our energy for the final day.

Day two was equally informative and stimulating. Roberto Vdovic from Zagreb University, Faculty of Architecture, started the proceedings with an overview of the course content and inclusion of ArchiCAD within the curriculum with three way open debate with Ray Elysee from Huddersfield University in the UK and Dr. Berndt Gensel Professor for Computer Sciences, School of Civil Engineering, Spittal Austria, concluding they all had common issues on how they support the students learning and deliberated to collaborate, share resources and develop an international educational forum with links to other universities.

Daniel Dusoswa from Dod Architects Ireland demonstrated a simple but effective method of creating a Landscape model complete with a road rising across the terrain with dry stone walls, a derelict building, gravel pits and rock formations with caves all using the mesh tool. The model was developed using a few datum points with contours and outlines using the line and circle tool but as Daniel reiterated never the spline tool. Using the magic wand with a series of defined mesh settings it was a very efficient method and eloquently explained.

The concluding presentation was extended to 90 minutes (partially because Ivan Peric and Andreas Lettner where unable to attend at the last moment) and gave the opportunity to demonstrate the collaborative use of Teamwork. Til Breton (French) and Herbert Peter (Austrian) in Pula and Andreas Lettner (via a Skype link working from his office in Tirol) all via a shared BIM server in Herbert’s office in Vienna gave a seamless and entertaining demonstration how Teamwork in ArchiCAD works. It was for me a humbling experience watching three people from two different nationalities all communicating in English and felt what other CAD program would do this and was very proud to be associated with the ArchiCAD community.

For the die-hards that stayed, including those who where tethered to Tuesday timetable of Ryan Air, Sunday gave us the opportunity to explore the ancient architecture of Pula and to sail around the neighbouring islands. Unfortunately the weather on Sunday changed and even though the water was a bitter choppy at times causing the boat to role when leaving the protection of the bay. The captain managed to find us a sheltered spot off a small island (once the residence of the former Yugoslavia president General Tito) and served us grilled fish from a very small galley on the covered deck – which was superb and some very dubious unchilled white wine with a screw top.

For Links to forth coming seminars including Sailing on a schooner from Amsterdam in June and the September ArchiCAD Summer School for the first time at John Moors University in Liverpool please go the ACUA website www.archicadusersassociation.com

A mini bio on Ray Elysee (who wrote the above recap):

Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers and Principal of Ray Elysee Associates (which was established in 1984). For the past twenty four years I have worked as a Design Consultant on a wide variety of commercial and development projects in the Retail and Leisure industries. Throughout the 1990’s I was the Principal Designer for Vision Express responsible for developing their brand in Europe, South America and the emerging eastern European markets in particular, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and St, Petersburg. Since returning to the UK in 2000 my interests have focused on Sustainable Architecture and Homes for an aging population with ongoing projects for York City Council and Regional Housing Associations.I am a keen cyclist and enjoy traveling. Time is equally divided between the Design Practice, Research and Development of emerging technologies and lecturing part time at the university

MNAUG #12 Recap

Posted: March 13th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps, MNAUG | Tags: BIM philosophy, BIMx, Production, Rendering, SketchUp | 12 Comments »

Our March 2011 usergroup meeting was one of my favorites: there was a wonderful turn out and a lot of lively discussion. The main topic for this meeting was what is everyone doing to leverage BIM / ArchiCAD to get and retain clients? While we did cover a lot of how-to stuff, it was all structured around that basic question.

BIM offers a lot of great opportunities. Better coordinated documents, clash detection, and other ways to minimize problems in the field. Ease of prototyping various design options, incorporating energy modeling and sustainable design options via EcoDesigner and similar programs, and the myriad other ways to improve the design process. In our local group most of us have found the biggest advantage of BIM / ArchiCAD to be improved communication with the client via better visualization options.

One of our members shared his experience using CrazyBump to develop normal maps for use in Artlantis. I don’t know enough to say whether the normal maps built in CrazyBump would work in the Lightworks rendering engine in ArchiCAD, but I don’t see why not. There’s a short video on the CrazyBump website showing how it works. Very cool and very easy. Maxwell Render was again brought up as a counterpoint to Artlantis. I need to get someone to do a presentation on that so we can see how cool it is. I think we’ll also aim to do another presentation on Artlantis this fall, as there is a lot of interest in learning more about that program. And it sounds like our presenter from last time has learned a whole bunch since the original tutorial he gave.

Animation and walk-throughs were also discussed. There was a post on the forum about creating an animation of a section that moves through a building. This can be done by using an object that moves with each frame as an operator on the rest of the building. However my two-year-old daughter Madeleine decided to get up at 6:30 am and not take a nap, so my brain is a bit fuzzy and I can’t find the post. A similar animated view of the building should be possible with this add-on. One local firm uses video conferencing software to do remote walk throughs with the ArchiCAD model. Most of us have done walk-throughs for coworkers or clients in person using this method. It’s good, but not great.

Over the past few months I’ve had a lot of success with Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) and I shared my experiences with the group. For those that aren’t familiar with VBE, it creates a stand-alone model that requires no special software to run and no secret knowledge to explore. The files are typically small enough to e-mail or otherwise transmit over the internet and are self-executing. The clients I’ve sent VBE files to have loved them. And as a testament to how useful VBE models are to understanding a design, for the first time in my career I can finally hold conversations with my family about my work. And perhaps the best part is that I’ve found providing VBE models for clients to be an additional revenue stream. If anyone wants to see an example of the VBE models I’ve created, wants more info about creating one, or is interested in getting Virtual Building Explorer send me an e-mail (sorry that last line sounds a little sales-y; it’s just such a killer app).

I’ve talked about hidden line renderings before, but I learned something new this week which I thought was really cool. Or perhaps another way to say it is, some dots were connected for me this week. One of the local firms uses the Sketch Rendering engine to produce all of their elevations. It’s a great solution to two of the majors complaints about computer elevations. If your aim is construction documents, your drawings tend to look cold and unsexy. If you create beautiful drawings, you’re spending too much time adding redundant 2D fixes or creating drawings that are tangential to the working drawings/model that you have to do and don’t necessarily further your understanding of the design. The Sketch Rendering engine allows you to dirty up your elevations without wasting time. Go to Parallel Projection Settings, set your camera to look straight at the elevation, set the sun to a pretty angle, and render (this also works great with sections and could also work for plans from the 3D window). I did three quick studies below. One is the elevation as it shows up in the construction documents. This elevation has no 2D additions. The line weights are what the model says, nothing extra. (surprise, surprise  when the contractor saw the drawings he wasn’t freaked out that there was no heavy airline). The second image is the same elevation rendered with materials and full color with the internal rendering engine. The last image is the Sketch Rendering engine. The 2nd and 3rd images each tell a different story. The colored image looks done. You see the image and believe that’s the final design. There’s a confidence to it. The sketch image though suggests more the essence of the building than the final solution. One understands the design, but its roughness hints at flux. It leaves room for interpretation. Same model in all three images, just different expressions and different accents. What I find so wonderful about these various options is that I can design and develop the model however is best for my own processes. And I have a variety of outputs available to me during the entire duration of the project (from first sketch to post construction) that can accurately represent the project, highlighting permanence, uncertainty, confidence, transience, etc.

Elevation from construction set (100% 3D, no 2D!)

Elevation using the Internal Rendering Engine

Elevation using the Sketch Rendering Engine

There was a lot more covered–our meetings usually end at 8:00 pm, this one continued until closer to 8:30 pm. We talked more about 3D documents, .ifc data exchange with Autodesk products, Telka BIMsight, and EcoDesigner. Some of us also mused about point clouds and 3D printing. I’ve also been working back and forth with SketchUp and shared my experiences with exporting a site model from ArchiCAD 14 to SketchUp 8 Pro (the site was incredibly faster to build in ArchiCAD than in SketchUp). But many of those topics deserve a blog post to themselves, especially the ArchiCAD to Sketchup process which is a nice continuation of this post.

MNAUG #11 Recap

Posted: January 29th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps, MNAUG | Tags: Material Takeoffs, Schedules, SketchUp | 5 Comments »

Winter Usergroup meetings in Minnesota are an adventure–snow, ice, sub-zero temperatures. I’m always so glad to see a mixture of new and old faces make the trip. This month, even with a location snafu, we had about 1/3 newcomers. Below are some highlights. There’s plenty more that we covered (complex profiles, attribute manager, library updates in v14, among other topics), but this post is already my longest to date.

I walked everyone through the steps of doing a material takeoff, based on the AECBytes article I mentioned in this earlier post. The process of setting up the materials and extracting the information is unbelievably simple. There are definitely some finer points I need to learn about, streamline, and fit into how I work at SALA Architects. But the hardest part about it has nothing to do with ArchiCAD. I don’t know much about material takeoffs. I need to learn. After reading the AECBytes article, anyone can follow the steps. Need to know the number of studs @ 24″ O.C. in a wall? Set the component you build to count .5 studs per foot. It’s pretty much that simple. Great now I can figure out the number of studs in all my designs. But wait. Is .5 the right number? Maybe it should be .55 studs per foot. Perhaps it’s really .8 studs per foot once you account for openings, plates, double studs, jack studs, king studs, overbuilt corners, etc. I don’t know. The point being, while material takeoffs are way more straightforward in ArchiCAD than I ever imagined, they’re only as accurate and smart as I am. My models are good. So they’re not the weak link. I am. I need to learn about estimating and use my model to improve my assumptions. And then use my assumptions to improve my model. Any contractors in Minnesota want work with me on this? Even if I modeled every stick and sheet in the building, that presumes I am right to place all those studs and boards correctly. Which I promise you I wouldn’t. And besides modern life is built on estimating and extrapolating data, not absolute knowledge (we don’t actually count every person to get a global population or count every star in the night sky).

In the spirit of schedules, lists, and takeoffs, I also showed everyone how to make a quick plumbing schedule from scratch. That was fun, especially because I’d never technically done it before! But I think the need for schedules like that is creeping closer and closer in my own work. A good start would be to use ArchiCAD to coordinate all the owner provided furniture and fixtures. Why not use ArchiCAD to keep track of that stuff and make sure it fits in the design? The schedule might not show up on the final drawings, but it would improve coordination during the design process. This conversation also made me realize I need to improve and update my window and door schedules. They’re both based on my v9 workflow. Outdated is an understatement.

We spent some time talking about gravity. ArchiCAD gravity, not real gravity. Gravity in ArchiCAD allows objects to intelligently be placed on the top of what’s below them. Doing a visualization model and want to put a vase of flowers on the kitchen island? Turn on gravity. Adding toilets, cabinets, and furniture to a half story? Turn on gravity. That’s actually how our discussion of gravity started: someone asked about the best way to do half stories. General consensus was to put 2 half stories on the same ArchiCAD story so that they show up easily on the same sheet. Putting half stories on different ArchiCAD stories creates more trouble than it’s worth.

Everyone also shared where they find objects online. At least one person in our group has had a lot of success with Google 3D Warehouse. He downloads the objects, saves them in SketchUp as a .3ds file and then opens the .3ds file in ArchiCAD. From his experience the objects come into ArchiCAD very clean and usable. I’m going to experiment with this as well. It’d be great to find some free SketchUp trees that work well in ArchiCAD. I very much look forward to a stronger SketchUp/ArchiCAD connection. And the project I’m working on between late February and late June will require that I interface with SketchUp a lot. So in the coming months I’m going to learn a lot more about working between the two programs. I’ve already had success with exporting a mesh that I created from a .dwg site plan into SketchUp via a .3ds file. The contoured site was also begun by someone else in SketchUp. It took less than 45 minutes to build the site in ArchiCAD from a surveyor’s .dwg and clean it up in SketchUp. By that point the .dwg file in SketchUp was almost ready to build 3D objects from. First head to head ArchiCAD vs SketchUp ‘battle’ that I’ve been in and it’s ArchiCAD 1 SketchUp 0. Just saying…

But back to finding objects online. An old coworker and I shared a story about downloading equipment to populate a public works building we worked on. Some equipment we built, others we found. We had no budget for downloads, so we were only looking for free objects. We found a great dumptruck, but it had one problem. Half of it was red. We could control the materials on the right side, but not the left. And the object was Russian, so we couldn’t understand any of the options and I wasn’t yet capable enough to open the object and explore the GDL. I probably could fix it now, two years later. But that’s not going on the to do list when I get my time machine. If I get my time machine.

MNAUG #10 Recap

Posted: December 19th, 2010 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps, MNAUG | Tags: BIMx, Complex Profile, Find & Select, Rendering | 2 Comments »

Although the meeting was focused on new users, there were some great questions and discussions that have value for all users. As in most of our meetings, a fair amount of time was spent discussing complex profiles. For anyone who’s not using complex profiles to their breaking point: get to it! Scott Newland shared a project and showed off some of the ways he was using them. One example, using 2 complex profiles, was a very elegant solution for an existing chimney on a house in Texas he’s remodeling. Also in the Texas project was an example of merging multiple documents and file types into ArchiCAD. On the title sheet was a linked PDF from Word, a Google map, and renderings from ArchiCAD. One could easily extrapolate that out further to more linked documents. A linked PDF from Excel or even AutoCAD would be just as easy. It was very nice for new users to see how easy it is to pull information from other places. Scott’s file also had an example of a great trick for showing roads and paths in mesh sites (Eric Bobrow did a video about this back in November–You can and should watch the video). I’ve used the trick a few times and it’s a huge time saver (I wish I knew about this trick in June when I was modeling the locations of designated wetlands in a very complex site).

We also spent a lot of time talking about various visualization topics. We explored the sketch rendering engine and compared various options within it. I showed about a half dozen different quick renderings of the same image, each with different sketch settings. These renderings were then compared to a 3D document of a similar view. A nice thing about the 3D document is the ability to copy and paste the model, creating a 2D copy of it. I’ve found this copy is nice because it allows for easy clean up–probably an intermediate solution. With a combination of better modeling and more careful creation of the 3D document, I’m sure exploding to 2D could be avoided. Currently I’ve only used the 3D document on one project, so I’m very new to it.

I also demonstrated an easy way to get a rendered plan with shadows. This was done using cut planes and an axonometric top down view. Since it’s a 3D view, it can be rendered in everything from lightworks to a sketch engine. I’ve yet to do it, but one could also make a 3D document from this view, thus allowing dimensions, text, etc. Prior to the 3D document, one had to place the rendered view on top of a regular plan view in Photoshop or Illustrator. A search on the ArchiCAD forum should lead to a bunch of good posts about this topic. I forgot to mention in the meeting that a similar plan with detailed materials could be created using image fills.

Both pen sets and materials were also discussed. Multiple pen sets are very important; I have another blog post coming up on that, so I’ll save my preaching for then. I used a recent cabin project to demonstrate the usefulness of smart material assignments. Materials should be assigned early and schematically. One doesn’t need to know what material the exterior walls will be–only that they should be assigned a unique material. So from the moment you draw your first wall on a project, assign it a material that can become the final material. Don’t make every wall, window, roof, and trim piece surface (white). Start the differentiation early. Assign a unique material to windows; even if you think it’s going to be wood, don’t use the same wood you assign to the trellis or the baseboard. If your exterior walls all start out as C01, then C01 can become Brick or Lap Siding or used to select only those walls and then divided into two groups – C01 and a new material. This leads to a larger issue of slicing a model. Again an issue that deserves it’s own blog post. The gist of it is this: know how to use find and select. Be able to refine your search to be amazingly specific. Use both the plus and the minus button.

The meeting ended with me showing an example of a walk through of a small cabin created in Virtual Building Explorer. It’s the first project I’ve used Virtual Building Explorer on. I’ve since sent the files to the clients and they were able to open the file and explore the project at there leisure. I’m very excited to be able to more easily share the model with the client. I’ve put a lot of time into building a robust model to do documents, so it’s nice to let other people spend time in there as well. If anyone is interested in seeing the walk through, let me know and I can e-mail it to you.

MNAUG #9 Recap

Posted: November 14th, 2010 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps, MNAUG | Tags: Cabinetry, Dimensions, Export to dwg | 3 Comments »

We had a good turn out last week for our 9th Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup. To celebrate a full year of meetings we had pizza (thanks, Graphisoft). We covered a lot of topics at this meeting. Many of them–like Solid Element Operations, two recent projects I’m working on, pen sets, complex profiles, and template development–deserve their own blog posts. So here are a few of the topics that we discussed that are more compact:

Someone in the group had been having an issue opening dwgs from ArchiCAD in SketchUp. It turns out that he was publishing the dwgs from Layout Book and not the View Map. The added information of the layout made SketchUp cranky (i.e., it wouldn’t open the file). Once he exported directly from the view map everything worked fine.

We looked at some of the object improvements in v14 (or at least since v11 which is what I’m comparing v14 to). Doors, windows, stoves, range hood, etc. all have a variety of tweaks. For a residential designer that has had to build a lot of custom hoods, it’s nice to see a more evolved object. I imagine there are similar changes to the objects that show up more in commercial projects. I encourage everyone to relook at the objects, even ones you might regard as useless from a previous version. I’ve been doing this and have been pleasantly surprised. The library still has holdovers from v11 and earlier, but there is plenty to be happy about. We also discussed the improvements to the cabinetry objects. In contrast to my previous views on how to model cabinetry, I’m forcing myself to use the actual cabinetry objects in v14 for at least one or two projects. At 1/4″ for plans and in the model views, I’m happy with them. I’m only in SD on the one project I’ve used them, so I’ve yet to see them in an interior elevation drawing at 3/8″ or 1/2″ = 1′-0″. But at this junction, I think I might be changing my views on cabinetry (at least for straight forward cabinets).

The improved dimensioning over the past few versions was another interesting topic. No longer having to specify X, Y, or angled dimensions (this goes back to either v12 or v13) and the ability to add text to the measured dimension (set to custom and make sure you have <MeasuredValue> in your custom text) are great, but the tool has been further revised. At least as far back as version 8.1 one could add to a dimension string using command+click. But this function was not obvious; I didn’t learn about this until I’d been using ArchiCAD for two years. Now there’s an option in the pet palette (left button, first row). This clarity will be great for new users. There are two other new buttons in the pet palette (sorry if these are from v13, I’ve mostly skipped v12 and v13). To realign the dimension string to be parallel to a give line, use the middle button, first row; this will make angled dimensions so much easier to verify they are properly aligned. And finally the right button in the first row of the pet palette allows you to graphically change the witness line.

Dimension Tool Pet Palette

BIM Breakfast (overdue thoughts)

Posted: October 13th, 2010 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps | Tags: Challenge | No Comments »

I went to the September AIA BIM Breakfast. As anyone who’s talked to me about BIM knows, I’m a big fan of this group.

We were all supposed to bring examples of BIM requirements so we could discuss how they impact the project delivery process. Twenty people attended. One person brought in an example for a new prison facility. The BIM requirements for this project (when various levels of modeled content were required and what digital deliverables were asked for) felt easily attainable. I had assumed, incorrectly, that the institutional and commercial worlds were far ahead of residential architects regarding deliverables and modeling/information. If I followed my usual good policies, I was paralleling what was asked for in this example. My ArchiCAD models are robust enough to meet this government agency’s needs–that is, if they needed a new cabin and not a 600-inmate minimum security prison. So for me this was the good news of the meeting. Doing what I can to push the envelope on documentation and production within ArchiCAD while not changing the final deliverable (still just printed 18 x 24 or 24 x 36 sets), I’m at least keeping pace. I’ve not spent much time exporting to IFC or other more complex file formats, but that feels like a smaller hurdle and one which ArchiCAD can handle, so I’m not worried. Primarily you need stuff worthy of translating and sharing. If a savvy residential client appeared tomorrow and demanded a BIM deliverable, I’d be ready. That’s good to know. I’ve just yet to meet a residential contractor that can take advantage of this.

Enough good news and self-congratulations. Time to start this post over and be a little more pessimistic:

I went to the September AIA BIM Breakfast. As anyone who’s talked to me about BIM knows, I’m a big fan of this group.

We were all supposed to bring examples of BIM requirements so we could discuss how they impact the project delivery process. Twenty people attended. One person brought an example. Five guys showed up dressed nicer than the guests at the last two weddings I went to. Solid color shirts and ties, nice suits, shiny shoes. One of them opted for a slick vest, fully buttoned, instead of his compatriots’ suit coats. The five of them all sat in a group on one side of the room and had lots of valuable input. They were Autodesk reps. Another handful of attendees were miscellaneous BIM consultants. Then there were the engineers. And contractors. All of them in the American Institute of Architects Minnesota boardroom. To round out the group there were five architects. And of those five architects, two of us were also software vendors. So at an AIA meeting, only 25% of the attendees were architects. This is typical of our group. An interdisciplinary group is great. In fact, as we BIM fanatics will rant, it’s integral to our success. But… it’s just one more example of the architect’s role being marginalized. There were as many Autodesk reps as architects in this meeting. That makes me comfortable about the future. (Sarcasm comes across in blog posts, right?)

We need more architects taking this paradigm shift in our industry with the gravity it deserves.