AECtech 2021 UK | carry On!
A special thanks to all who attended AECtech 2021 UK and made the event a huge success! This mid-summer event was hosted by Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio in collaboration with Simply Rhino, Grimshaw Architects, and KPF Architects which explored innovations coming out of the UK AEC space and their global collaborations. This virtual event was attended by an amazing group of teachers, presenters, and participants who spanned the globe and came together to learn new ways of working during 2 day of workshops, pioneer new technology during a 27-hour hackathon, and hear presentations from industry leaders about evolutions in technology and practice.
Workshops
The event kicked off with two days of workshops on Thursday, July 8th, and Friday, July 9th.
Recording of the workshops can be found on our YouTube channel.
Attendees had the opportunity to take a variety of classes described below.
Interop Cubed | Grimshaw Architects
Georgios Tsakiridis, Natalia Wojtowicz, Justyna Szychowska, Paris Nikitidis
The workshop will focus on interoperability and data visualization among AEC platforms. Leveraging the power of Rhino.Inside and Unity Reflect, participants will get the opportunity to learn how to query, modify and analyze Revit elements in Rhino using Grasshopper and explore potential ways of transferring, communicating, and visualizing environmental analysis data of their designs in an immersive Unity enabled VR environment.
Rhino.Compute API | KPF
Brandon Pachuca, Ping-Hsiang Chen
The studio-based culture of design offices gives designers the freedom to approach design problems in a variety of ways. The challenge of solving these complex problems has led to an increase in specialist groups within the office, specifically experts in computation, urban analytics, and environmental performance, who are working alongside several project teams at once to improve workflows and design outcomes. Recent efforts to centralize computational tools through workflows such as Rhino.Compute and hops look to increase the number of projects that benefit from specialist knowledge, while at the same time increasing the impact of solutions developed within the context of a specific project. Using Rhino.Compute as a back-end solver for Grasshopper definitions, design studios can centralize and version control definitions while offloading heavy workloads onto remote hardware and providing end-users with a UI/UX set in their existing workflows. This workshop will review how to link a Python Script running in Jupyter Notebook to a Rhino Compute Windows Server to facilitate quick analysis and heavy computational workflows better.
Efficient workflows to create and optimize Curtain Wall Panels | KPF
Aniket Dikshit , Ehsan Iran-Nejad , Alex Wilson
Revit offers an array of methods for façade creation from utilizing in-built system families, to creating highly complex adaptive panels. With the emergence of Rhino.Inside.Revit has created more possibilities for seamless geometry translations and creation. By exploring these KPF Projects, we will discuss and unpack different workflows, the advantages of each, and the initial decision-making process that went into these selections.
New collaboration workflows based on remote parametric algorithms | Shapediver
Mathieu Huard, Sergey Pigach
Following its merge with the Swarm project developed by TT Core Studio, ShapeDiver has focused on bringing innovative tools in the AEC industry and beyond. One main focus is to help increase the productivity of design and engineering teams in various stages of small and large-scale projects. Thanks to an innovative data transfer format optimized for structured CAD data, ShapeDiver brings a new way to approach and solve challenges related to interoperability. Design teams no longer have the need to exchange files and interact with design environments they are not familiar with. During this workshop, we will show how to use Grasshopper definitions as remote modules to automate repetitive design and engineering tasks. We will also explore the ability to iterate designs across various clients and to synchronize saved states between them. Finally, we will introduce the ShapeDiver online viewer and API in the context of a project presentation and as a communication tool with partners and clients.
CORE apps for AEC | CORE studio
David Mans, Hanshen Sun
As the demand for data-rich continues to grow in the AEC industry, the need to quickly display, evaluate, and explore the relationship between data and models has become more prevalent. This workshop will introduce three CORE studio apps that enable the visualization and curation of data through Data Viz, drawings, and models. Participants will learn how to visualize data in geometry, manage design options, and share views in drawings using Trace and 3D models using Mirar. Participants will then learn how to link their model to a project dashboard in Thread allowing them to search, filter, and visualize both the model and data synchronously and share design options with interactive reports.
Rhino and BIM Interoperability | MKS BEAM
Mikael Santrolli
BEAM extends the current Rhino and BIM interoperability workflow providing easy-to-use apps to organize data and geometry directly in Rhino, managing and simplifying the transfer to Revit or IFC. During the workshop participants will learn how to: Create Families with Parameters and manage BIM data in Rhino. Importing a Family in Revit, Advanced Revit workflows with Rhino Blocks and Adaptive Components. Automation with visual programming with BEAM for Grasshopper and BEAM for Dynamo. Workflows from Revit To Rhino. Rhino IFC data and export.
Hackathon
On Saturday, July 10th, hackers, programmers, engineers, architects, designers, and students virtually came together for a 27 hour hackathon. For the second time the virtual hackathon brought in a wide range of international participants which allowed for 24 hour hacking across multiple time zones. The results are some incredibly innovative open-source hacks you can find below.
Spatial Scheduler | Best Overall Hack
Elcin Ertugrul, Amit Nambiar, Adam Chernick, Rolanda Villena, Ezgi Sendil
Spatial Scheduler is a maintenance scheduling app that helps to create Augmented Reality (AR) enabled spatial persistent notes on locations in the real world. As Proof of Concept, we developed an IOS App that enables us to place sticky notes on a space, setting up a unique maintenance schedule in each location. For example, you can create a spatial notification reminding you how often to water your plants, when to clean your couch, when to replace the filter of your AC etc.
https://github.com/amitlzkpa/ar-points
Bonobo | Best Open Source Hack
Sergey Pigach, Omid Farshadfar, Congzheng Zou, Ardeshir Aliaskari, Sahil Tadwalkar
A Grasshopper bridge for Blender simulations
https://github.com/enmerk4r/Bonobo
Hackuble
Emil Poulsen, Hanshen Sun, Praneet Mathur, Yankun Yang, Yushi Kato
Hackuble is a generative 3D modeling environment built to write and execute C# code in the browser. Scripts can either be authored in the application or brought in by loading compiled .NET dlls. The scripts can manipulate the 3D scene, such as adding objects. Each script becomes a button, which can be executed later on.
https://github.com/EmilPoulsen/AecHackBlazor
Recenseo
Nick Mundell, Amit Nambiar, Mark Skepasts, Johan Reissmuller, Lukas Fuhrimann, Sahar Barzani
Recenseo is a PDF Markup tool dedicated to Rhino that allows a list of PDF drawing markups to be directly referenced into a 3D Rhino model. Both text markups and graphical markups are supported and individual markups can be reviewed through selection from a list. Once reviewed and changes made, markup can be checked off as ‘done’
HACKATHON JUDGES
A special thank you to our excellent panel of judges
Nicholas Desbiens, KPF
Andy Watts, Grimshaw
Martha Tsigkari, Foster & Partners
Pablo Zamorano, Heatherwick
Ryan Hughes, Schmidt Hammer Lassen
Robert Yori, EnTech Engineering PC
Tech Presentations
During the Saturday hackathon event, several virtual Tech Presentations were introduced to support the participant’s efforts. These 30-minute presentations will be an ongoing part of the AECtech hackathon entry and had a strong start this year with presentations by the following companies.
MKS BEAM | Rhino and BIM Interoperability
Mikael Mauro, Mikael Santrolli
Speckle | Visualizing real-time model updates with Speckle
Claire Kuang, Alan Rynne
Unity | The power of real-time BIM for visualizing 3D-7D
Jack Strongitharm
Alloverse | Easily build collaborative apps for VR and 3D with Alloverse
Nevyn Bengtsson, Tobias Kask
MINI SYMPOSIUM
On Monday, July 12 the event finished strong with a series of presentations by industry innovators in Architecture, Engineering, and Software development. Each presenter showcased how advances in technology and work culture are shifting the way projects are designed, developed, and delivered and spoke about the future trends in the industry they see emerging. You can find presentation descriptions below and watch the event at our YouTube channel.
Grimshaw | Shifting Focus: Design Technology at Grimshaw
Andy Watts, Director of Design Technology / Georgios Tsakiridis, London Computational Design Manager
ShapeDiver | New Collaboration Workflows Based on Remote Parametric Algorithms
Mathieu Huard | Head of Product & Co-Founder
KPF | Distributed Design Intelligence: Broadening the Impact of Specialist Knowledge
Cobus Bothma, Director / Luc Wilson, Director / Nicholas Desbiens, Head of Digital Practice
McNeel | Peeking over the Horizon
Scott Davidson, Business Development / Luis Fraguada, McNeel
Thornton Tomasetti | Custom Toolkit Development for a Complex Façade EOR Project
Alloy Kemp, Senior Associate / Viktoria Henriksson, Project Engineer