March 16 through 20
https://www.tamu.edu/coronavirus/ Updates from Texas A&M about the coronavirues pandemic response.
Classes are cancelled March 16-20 and we will be delivered using distance education methods for the remainder of the semester. For ARCH 406, you are not required to be physically on campus for the rest of the semester.
Communicating with people around the world is greatly facilitated by teleconferencing. We will have opportunities to speak with consultants using distance tools. Please familiarize yourself with Zoom. Texas A&M has an extensive license for the software allowing nearly unlimited numbers of users. It provides live video, live audio, screen sharing, sketching, chat, and other capabilities. You can use it by using a Web-based tool, or for more features, by installing the software on your computers and devices. See the TAMU Zoom web site.
Zoom, NetMeeting, Skype, Webex, GoToMeeting, BlueJean and others are all basically the same. The idea is explained a Web post in the How Stuff Works site.. I have used many of the competitors. Most of them provide an option for using a telephone (cell phone) to call to a toll free number or Voice Over IP, which uses the Internet for audio conversations. I usually use the phone dial-in instead of Voice Over IP because it tends to provide better audio quality.
According to their Website, Zoom provides HD video and audio, whiteboarding, chat, content sharing, and co-annotation. I suspect that we will make heavy use of video, audio, screen-sharing, and whiteboarding, and moderate use of chat. I will investigate the other capabilities and see if they are useful for us.
Zoom is aware of FERPA requirements for privacy of student records.
Readily available tools are very effective for studying architecture and design over the Internet. The desk critique (or desk crit) is key to the studio teaching method. It involves close communication to enable "learn by doing" and "learn by watching" approaches. We need to be able to not only talk with each other, but to share sketches, share digital drawings and models, share videos and walk-through experiences of buildings, and mark-up materials, in real-time (synchronous) as well as recorded (asynchronous) formats.
First, telecommunications are critical. Texas A&M provides us with Zoom, a robust, commercial-grade, full featured telecommunications tool. It supports practically unlimited number of people in a meeting with audio and video. Audio can be voice-over-IP using the Internet channel for information, or regular telephone lines and mobile lines can be used if the Internet audio is inadequate in quality. Participants should mute their audio when they are not speaking, and unmute when they are speaking. Speakers in a large room typically do not work, as echos produce feedback and distortions. However, two or three people in an office can often participant in a teleconference meeting quite effectively. I have even set up a conference call on my IPhone with three people and tied us all into a teleconference meeting.
Meeting participants can share their screen or an application window on their computer. Thus, I can present to you using Powerpoint and you can present to the class as well. We can look at Revit models, renderings, and share Web sites. We can share modeling techniques.
A chat function allows meeting participants to share text messages during the meeting. It is a great way to collect and queue questions and share Web addresses.
A whiteboard provides a drawing window. All participants can draw and annotate on the whiteboard. The contents can be saved for reuse.
Name your files with your last name, the date, and a descriptor:
You can grab your computer screen or a portion of your computer screen using many tools. My current favorite is Snip & Sketch from Microsoft. Advantages are that it is free; one can grab the entire screen, a window, or an area of the screen; and one can delay the capture for a few seconds to allow you to drop down menus for inclusion in the grab.
Get it from the Microsoft store:
It may be useful to record a computer operation to teach others how to do the operation. Or you may need to troubleshoot something that goes wrong. You may want to capture a set of views of your design in a walk-through and store it for later use. Since you are already learning to use Zoom, you can open a Zoom meeting and record your screen or window. When you finish the recording, Zoom will save it to your hard drive. You can then post it on YouTube, Ticktock, or a Google Drive for downloading.
You could also edit the video. Microsoft Photos includes a simple video editor. You can download it from the Microsoft Store for free. There are many alternatives.
Videos can also be embedded in PowerPoint shows, and that assemblage can itself be recorded with voice annotation. If sharing the PowerPoint, you may have to share the videos as separate files.
Microsoft Steps Recorder is a utility specifically intended for a user to show a technician what operation is causing a problem., or the technician to show exactly how to execute several steps in a complex operation. It is free from the Microsoft Store. The software generates a set of screen captures images showing mouse clicks and provides a narrative of what is done. These can be played in a slideshow.
Drawings and reports can be produced as multi-page sets. These can be marked up with PDF editing tools.
Autodesk provides a powerful tool for sharing 3D models for inspection and markup. A BIM 360 user can look at the 3D model, spin it, walk through it, and move section planes through it, Each element can be inspected to see its parameter values. Notes can be attached to elements and expanded as one inspects the 3D model.
Try out BIM 360 and watch the tutorials.
To use Zoom, the first thing that you need to do is to get the client software (the software that runs on your computer is the "client" and the software that runs on a remote computer to tie it all together is called the "server".) See instructions below from the TAMU Web site
https://it.tamu.edu/services/audio-video-and-telecommunication/audio-video/zoom/
Your account is ready! You simply need your NetID and password to log in.
Downloading the client to your computer provides the most seamless experience. To get started, visit https://tamu.zoom.us/download. Click Download Zoom Client for Meetings. Once installed, click Sign In with SSO. Type tamu in the box before .zoom.us. Click Continue. Log in with your NetID and password.
If you will host meetings that contain any type of personal health information (PHI), whether or not the meeting is recorded, you should not use Zoom. A PHI-friendly Zoom is in the works.
Visit the App Store, Google Play, or https://tamu.zoom.us.
Large firms, and many small firms too, collaborate with partners over great distances. The home office may be in a different city, consultants may be across town, the project itself may be constructed in a different state, contractors could be scattered across a region, and suppliers could be located around the world. Software companies have met the challenge of sharing documents and supporting collaborative discussions with tools tailored to our industry. BIM 360 is a product from Autodesk that allows one to compose and manage diverse, dispersed design teams to review project designs and make decisions. It provides viewing of 3D models, section cuts, orbiting, walk-throughs, inspection of elements and parameters, and commenting.
We will use BIM 360 to help us work together as teams. I have made accounts for all of you in BIM 360 and assigned each of you to the appropriate one of the following projects:
Each of you needs to login to BIM 360 at https://www.autodesk.com/bim-360/ . You may already have an account or you may need to claim one. Your email address is the one that ends with @tamu.edu You will be a student -- no need to create a commercial account.
Start reviewing the Web sites for learning BIM 360 at http://help.autodesk.com/view/BIM360D/ENU/
Your strategy to work together as a group is to split the drawing and modeling into separate tasks. The decision of how to split is up to you. One of you could work on the site, while another works on the exterior of the buildings, and the third person works on the interiors. Or one could work on five adjacent buildings inside and outside, while another works on another five. You should post your part of the project to BIM 360 at various times and dates, so that your team mates can see what you have done. If you coordinate the project point of each file, then the various files can be linked together in a seamless whole.
You should get together at scheduled times to review the project in BIM 360. You may want to run BIM 360 while you are in a Zoom meeting.
This is a tough experiment. The tool is very powerful, but very strange and unfamiliar to us all.
I anticipate using BIM 360 to present our projects for a final review.