University of Oregon - Department of Architecture - ARCH 424/524 Cheng - Advanced Design Development Media

Session Eight

Modeling IV, Web Communications
Jan 29, 1996

Objectives: To develop a learning community, To understand how CAD models can parallel architectural construction

I. Project Workshop: Peer critiques

With your assigned partner, examine each other's Web pages and discuss the highlights and areas of difficulty. Take digital notes and be ready to answer the following questions:

How do the pages' elements (layout, color, hierarchy, typography, graphics, etc.) contribute to expressing your objectives? How can they be improved?
What techniques do you need to learn? How can the class contribute towards meeting this need efficiently?

II. Sharing our thoughts with Motet

Motet will enable us to post electronic messages to each other and to our partner schools in HKU & UBC. The tool helps sort the messages into categories and allows automatic linking of URL's.

TRY IT: Login to the system and check your e-mail for a password to enter. Look at Getting Started with Motet.

If you can login, click the Show all conferences button, then the VDS97 conference, List all topics and then Post. You should be able to add your note to any of the topics as well as start a new topic.

In the coming month, we'll be bouncing ideas off our partners in HK and UBC .

For this message board to work well, we need your input. For each session, you will be assigned to send a note. This time, post suggestions for your partner based on the questions discussed above and the following:
Project Planning:

What steps can you take to successfully complete the required submissions?
What organizing principles and what elements can you identify for modeling?

III. Matching CAD methods to architectural construction

As we saw last time, how we structure information enables and limits how we can work with it in the future. In addition to the layers, objects and symbols we looked at previously, the types of graphic primitives that we create can structure how we can control design. Each type has been programmed to allow only certain kinds of changes.

Linear elements correspond to skeletal wood or steel members. These are best utilized in structural hierarchies (i.e. member > truss > flat frame > bay module). See a model of a Calatrava bus stop.

Surface elements can correspond to the sheathing or enclosure around the skeleton. They are made by moving a flat shape along a path.

If the path is straight, this corresponds to the extrusion process for small metal profiles and rolled steel sections.
If the path is circular, this corresponds to lathing.
If the path is complex and the profile changes on the path, the computer process called Lofting corresponds to glass-blowing.

A single face can be made by:

spanning between a set of points (3 for a triangular flat face, 4+ could be non-planar)
pulling a line through space along a linear path
spanning two lines, arcs or splines
spanning between a continuous perimeter (may be non-coplanar)

Meshes are groupings of adjacent faces aligned in grids.

Meshes are generated when profiles are connected. If the profiles are controlled curves, then the three-dimensional curvature can be closely manipulated.
More complex surface meshes are generated by a non-linear path or a changing profile with lofting.
Tent structures can be simulated by creating meshes between boundary lines and then deforming them according to gravity.

Solid elements can correspond to concrete, weight-bearing masonry and earth-sheltered design.

Boolean operations allow combinations of 2D areas and 3D solid forms with union, subtraction, and intersection. The punctured wall in this section of a Pinos and Miralles project was created by subtraction by Thoman Wong.

edited Jan 18, 1996 by nywcheng