Augmented Construction Communications

Project managers who are responsible for developing competitive marketing strategies, know that having a good idea is not nearly as important as presenting that idea effectively to potential clients.

Quick and Simple Graphic Information

As a new communications tool, many companies have learned that SketchUp is uniquely suited to produce the kind of graphic information that is often critical to explaining a particular approach to a construction contract.  Exploring this communicative potential and staying out in front of its power is essential in today’s competitive markets.

In fact, each of our construction modeling books (http://insitebuilders.com) is a research project intended to both explain and explore not only the practical potential of construction modeling, but also to illustrate alternate ways to deliver and transfer construction information.

Presenting Construction Concepts

At the same time, constructors building 3D construction models for their projects also know that almost any model can be quickly cut and pasted from in-house libraries of previous projects.  Once a construction model is ready for distribution:

1. Screenshots can be exported to illustrate a written proposal,
2. Sequence animations can be embedded into presentation programs,
3. Both the images and animations can be posted to the web.

For example, these are low resolution images of a research tool we use to explore alternative concepts for both construction and construction documentation.  The images were Exported from SketchUp and are fast to upload or email and simple to paste into a text editor, or slide show.

A video animation of the model can also be uploaded to You-Tube.  This particular video is a simplified version of a more comprehensive construction model found in our book, Living SMALL.

You-Tube animations can be embedded in an email, web page, or viewed by anyone who visits their site.  Alternately, controls can be set to limit viewers to a restricted group of project players.

The SketchUp construction model

The actual SketchUp file can also be uploaded to Google’s 3D Warehouse where anyone can download it, examine its details closely, or embed it in another construction model.  Downloads are done within SketchUp, but the file can also be picked up directly from the website containing the shared model.

Manufacturers and suppliers working to serve the needs of the design and construction industry use this feature to make models available of their own products.  You can download this model using this Tiny URL link to the Google Warehouse:

http://tinyurl.com/oyhm7s

Note that because the model is also “geographically located” it is possible to view the model on Google Earth as a 3D Building.  All one needs is the address of the project to search and fly to its location.  As readers of our books know, Google Earth is a powerful program able to contextualize a jobsite and help in site utilization planning.

Hypergraphic Communications

In the end, what we’re seeing is a number of emerging communications technologies, including 3D modeling programs, high level presentation media, and growing social networking sites like this blog, Facebook, and MySpace that can be used to distribute construction information.

Each evolution of these technologies brings new power and potential to increasingly aggressive and innovative companies.  Giving those that understand how to use these new tools the ability to present their ideas clearly and communicate in ways that were once considered not only impossible, but unnecessary in the markets of just a couple years ago….

Spotlight: news.SketchUcation.com

Spotlight: Dennis Fukai of Insitebuilders

Written by Csaba Pozsárkó Books, Education, Google SketchUp Tutorials, Interviews Jun 29, 2009

Barbara and Dennis Fukai are the people “behind” Insitebuilders, a small press specializing in books for the design and construction industry. All of their construction books are written as graphic narratives using a combination of three-dimensional illustrations, interactive 3D construction models, short videos, captioned text, and interactive media. Their goal is to keep their construction books simple. The objective is to make complex construction information quick to read and easy to understand. To accomplish this they use very accurate 3D construction models built with Google SketchUp. The Daily CatchUp asked Dennis about his reasons for using SketchUp for this purpose.

TDC: What do you see as the real value of SketchUp?

Dennis: I think Brad Schell, the founder of SketchUp, said it best on the cover of our book “Building SIMPLE: Building an Information Model.” To paraphrase, he saw 3D modeling as the best way for everyone to share the ideas, designs, and dreams we all have floating around in our heads. For Brad, everyone, the “professional architect, builder, mom and pop remodeling a kitchen, or a kid designing the next space station…” has an idea that needs to be expressed. In short, his dream was to bring 3D to the masses, and that’s exactly what he did.

What has always amazed me about SketchUp is its intuitive feel. It seems like the tools are right where they should be, they operate almost exactly how one would expect them to, and the program anticipates the little things necessary to make 3D modeling easy for everyone. In fact, the pure genius of SketchUp, is that some how the original @Last team was able to get all of these ideas coded into a simple program that seems to just expand and grow from within its own user base.

And what is truly amazing is that in all our books, with thousands of pieces in hundreds of assemblies, we have yet to find the limit of what even the early versions of SketchUp can do. There is no way any of this is an accident, and I continue to admire how inventive and instinctive that early vision remains in probably the most useful product out there for construction modeling.

TDC: Why use SketchUp for construction modeling?

Dennis: Though it’s a great design tool, SketchUp is more than a pretty face. It also has an important role to play as an information and communications tool for manufacturing, construction, and property development. In fact, its real value is not that it can simply illustrate objects in 3D, but that it can also very quickly model and communicate “time” as an erection sequence, simulated field assembly, or a preconstruction process. (See Dennis’s blog: http://insitebuilders.wordpress.com)

We use our books to show how SketchUp can be an effective tool to visually communicate the means and methods of an assembly as a series of distinct events or activities. This is especially important in risk management, but it is equally important in discussing change orders and clarifications because it sets up a visual understanding of a problem from a common point of view.

The result is an increasingly collaborative approach to construction, where owners, designers, and constructors are all able to animate concerns in 3D, illustrate project production over time, test alternative approaches to an assembly, and evaluate schedules and costs as a logical sequence of activities in order to find the best values for a project.

TDC: How is construction modeling different in SketchUp?

Dennis: The speed and intuitive feel of SketchUp makes it easy for almost anyone to build a construction model. The trick is using the Outliner in combination with strict control over the organization of the pieces of the total construction. Layer controls, Groups and Components help, but the basic idea is to maintain distinct clusters of objects as a controlled collection of nested construction assemblies.

Fortunately, almost all estimates and schedules in construction are organized in a work breakdown structure (WBS). This means the WBS quickly provides an over all framework for the pieces of the construction model, including three standard levels of subassemblies, sequences, and the supporting labor and equipment used to actually build almost any complex construction project.

The organizational methods we use for the construction models in our books have evolved with the changes to SketchUp over the years. This means that our readers not only interact with the animated details of complex construction in 3D, but they can also follow through with those assemblies using the hands-on project based tutorials included with every book.

TDC: Thank you, Dennis, for these “insights” and finally here are some exciting (though low resolution) samples from the books:

Thank you Csaba !!

< yk86zjwm4q >

Real World, Real Time Construction Information

We’ve just published a follow-up to the book 3D Construction Modeling. The new book, How a House is Built: with 3D Construction Models is a how-to book on construction modeling using the latest version of SketchUp. The modeling lessons in the book are wrapped in the virtual construction of a small, simple, and sustainable house that covers the step-by-step and day-to-day details of residential construction from surveyed layout to MEP finish.

The book uses the same detailed 3D models, captioned text, short videos, and 3D illustrations we use in all our books, but its final chapter differs from our earlier publications because it begins to explore how a contractor (or designer) might use the web as a visual interface to communicate construction information.

Though all our books come with CDs that act as a window to the Internet, offering links to the models, video downloads, and the web resources used in the book, this is the first time we’ve mounted a chapter on the web in an attempt to explore a fully interactive construction information environment.

A paper-based model for a paperless jobsite

Not to say that the resulting web pages are so great, or that the over all research potential has really even begun to be explored. But what occurred to me as this section of the book was being developed is that the original notion of paperless project documentation on a rapidly moving construction jobsite is, in practice, constrained by a fundamental assumption that paperless information should follow a paper-based model.

In other words, in order to find a paperless environment, early attempts by constructors have been to use paper as a template for electronic translation. Documents are simply posted online as PDFs, text or spreadsheet files, or a collection of JPEGs. Worse yet are the orphaned CAD.dwgs — complete with bundled X-refs and a conglomeration of programmatic references which, of course, only actually work on the computers that originated the graphic files.

Even more challenging is that these electronic files are often emailed or quickly posted and indexed as a list of cryptic titles with no visual references or clue as to what they are or how they might fit together. Over the life of even the smallest project, electronic information becomes as worthless to day-to-day management as the growing pile of printed boilerplate specs crowding the back of a construction trailer.

The resulting indices are handy archives to store and retrieve evidentiary information, but a long way from the visual and dynamic potential of what the web might bring to support real world, real time, construction management.

A construction information environment

What is interesting to me in this new book is the combination of the three-dimensional storyboards used in all our books, mixed with manufacturing links, interactive details, animations, and streaming videos – both from the models that illustrate the book and publicly posted videos on U-Tube and similar websites.

It’s as if the chapter’s six web pages flesh out the construction information I’m trying to convey and expand on the three-dimensional models, not as 4D or nD, but as an information environment that points in a direction that casts a dark shadow over the existing paper-based paradigm. In fact, the resulting chapter could not be printed. A single page of multidimensional information cannot be tied to paper or printer and must remain in its interactive, electronic state.

Readers, or perhaps users, must then be induced (or enticed) into a participatory world. Moving from topic to topic and link to link, taking in the information in response to actions that only they can initiate. The information is therefore layered in relational stacks of visual data, stepping beyond the role of a static construction document and back into the fold of real time, relevant construction communication.

Understanding motion and movement in this graphical information environment is something we’ll continue to test and explore in our next books. But the notion of moving through the data, inferring references from graphical clues, and presenting information in deepening layers of relevance, has the potential to parallel and somehow represent the same controlled chaos we find on almost every jobsite.

Who?

Dennis Fukai, Architect, PhD
http://insitebuilders.com/CV

Dennis is a licensed architect and construction manager with more than thirty years experience as a professional construction administrator, researcher, and construction management professor. He is a Fulbright Scholar and earned his PhD in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Dennis has written seven books and numerous chapters and articles on graphic communications in construction and has been recognized internationally for his work in advanced construction modeling and information systems. (See http://insitebuilders.com for more information)