NXT BLD virtual

NXT BLD goes virtual

From 8-14 October 2020, we’ll be hosting our first virtual conference, taking place entirely online in daily 90 minute sessions. Our line up of speakers is unparalleled, tickets completely free, and the event fully interactive with a live Q&A

As 2020 continues to do its flows. The vocal group of architectural ing to building fabrication. worst, NXT BLD (Next practices, who wrote that infamous letter to Elif Erdine, director of Emergent Build), AEC Magazine’s and Autodesk’s CEO, will be discussing what Technologies at the AA, has done some Lenovo’s conference on they’d like to see — and what the industry fascinating research into computational future AEC technology will needs — from future design technologies. design, robotic assisted fabrication and not be suppressed any longer. While the Mollie Claypool is an architecture theo- construction, all of which made her a natuphysical event has been put back to 16 June rist, critic and educator at the Bartlett. Her ral choice for NXT BLD. 2021, for obvious reasons, we will put on recently released book, Robotic Building: Mark Taylor, senior digital construction our first virtual variant starting 8 October Architecture in the Age of Automation manager at Royal BAM Group has been 2020, running 9, 12, 13, 14 October. caught our attention and we are thrilled to involved in developing new technologies

NXT BLD Virtual will be broken up into have her speak. for on and offsite construction. Mark will 90 minute instalments to run in the after- Nate Miller is founder of Proving look at how technologies like 3D printed noon (UK BST) over the five days. Ground, assisting some of the biggest concrete are expanding Royal BAM’s

Each session will start with three 20 firms with their tricksiest data and compu- capabilities. Meanwhile, Alexander Türk minute presentations followed by 30 minutes of live Q&A with the ‘‘ The vocal group of architectural practices, who wrote of Aeditive will also share new developments in construction speakers. It’s free to register and you’ll also get to view the content that infamous letter to Autodesk’s CEO, will be discussing what they’d like to see — and what the 3D printing. Foster+Partners’ Fernando Garcia online afterwards. industry needs — from future design technologies Blanco will join Elena For those unfamiliar with NXT BLD we bring together a mix of researchers, prac- tation problems. We asked Nate to look at ’’ Casini of Most Architecture to give a fascinating insight into how humans and titioners and technologists to give a series the future of conceptual design tools. robots will interact in buildings of the of talks on future technologies, innovative Alex Coulombe of Agile Lens will be future — a future where robots build, projects and updates on the state of looking at the development of VR and its maintain and learn, and coexist with research from around the globe. use in architectural design, through a real humans in a natural environment. world project over a number of years, as Ken Pimentel is AEC Industry Manager Conference lineup the technology matured and the quality at Epic Games. Through Unreal Engine the This year we have an incredible lineup of improved dramatically. company is pioneering high poly, real-time speakers from across the globe. Bruce Bell of Facit Homes, the first rendering for architectural visualisation

We’ve very excited to welcome the Open bespoke design to digital fabrication resi- and Ken will look at what’s coming next. Letter to Autodesk group who will be dis- dential practice, has spent the last year Andrew Rink of Nvidia will share the latcussing the future of Digital Design work- looking at what new technologies are com- est on Omniverse, an exciting new plat-

Mollie Claypool Automated Architecture

Nate Miller Proving Ground Bruce Bell Facit Homes Fernando Garcia Blanco Foster+Partners Elif Erdine Architectural Association

Mark Taylor Royal BAM Group

Fernando Garcia Blanco of Foster+Partners and Elena Casini of MOST Architecture will give a fascinating insight into how humans and robots will interact in buildings of the future

form technology that brings together architects and other stakeholders in a visually rich, real-time collaborative environment.

Scott Ruppert, Chris Ruffo and Mike Leach will discuss survey results and feedback collected by Lenovo about how Covid has changed they way people work.

Meanwhile, AMD will show how Threadripper Pro, a beast of a CPU with up to 64-cores that makes the new Lenovo ThinkStation P620 tick, is transforming AEC workflows.

Finally, Johan Hanegraaf and Hilmar Gunnarsson will give their presentation from within VR, showing the latest developments in their groundbreaking collaborative conceptual design tool Arkio.

Check out nxtbld.com for more details and the full line up of speakers.

Design Computation I/O This year we will also co-host Design Computation I/O, a start-up research conference on computational design methods, which has also gone virtual. If you know anyone in computational design, it’s definitely worth alerting them to this in-depth event designcomputation.org/dcio

Virtual conference details 8, 9, 12, 13, 14 October 2020 90 minute afternoon sessions (BST) Claim your free conference pass at nxtbld.com

Elena Casini MOST Architecture Alex Coulombe Agile Lens Andrew Rink Nvidia Ken Pimentel Epic Games

Chris Ruffo Lenovo Workstations Hilmar Gunnarsson Arkio

Review: Shapr3D

With only a handful of 3D modelling applications available for the iPad, it’s not often that you see a decent one. Al Dean takes a look at Shapr3D’s new offering, which promises interactive tools for concept modelling

The iPad has been something of a – or $20 per month if you pay annually, Tapping it with the Pencil selects the face revelation in the design world. representing a 20% discount. geometry and offers you an offset operaThe idea that you might have a So, what do you get for your $240 per tion. If you double-tap with the Pencil, high-performance computing year? You get a modelling system that the whole body is selected. device that offers both touch and stylus works in the manner you’d imagine for Most of these gestures and interactions input on a highly portable, high-resolu- an interactive device like the iPad. are intuitive, but it is worth spending tion display is something architects have Technically speaking, Sharp3D has been time going through the very well-develbeen crying out for. built on the Parasolid platform (a 3D geo- oped help system to pick up tips. A good

Even so, there’s been a distinct lack of metric modelling kernel used in way to think of the interplay between tools available for those looking to create Vectorworks and many of the leading 3D Pencil and finger is that your finger is for 3D concepts on the iPad. There have been mechanical CAD tools) and could be manipulation of the view, while the several for the engineering world (most classed as a direct modelling system. It Pencil is reserved for creation, whether notably Onshape, now owned by PTC) offers a wide range of tools to help you that’s sketching out a profile, creating a and any number of interior/floorplan build geometry from sketches and formal feature or editing geometry position. related tools but these look less than pro- prismatic features, as well as adapt existfessional at best. Then along came ing geometry by pushing, pulling and Getting modelling Hungarian start-up Shapr3D, looking to editing it. If you’ve used Sketchup, you’ll There are four main toolbars of operabring industrial-grade design tools to the already be familiar with the workflow. tions and commands. These can be device with its eponymous app. While its Sketch profiles, push, pull, rotate into found, by default, on the left-hand side of undoubtedly aimed at the mechanical design community, there are also some ‘‘ Consider this as a conceptualisation and 3D the screen. Sketching brings up a set of sketching tools for drawing planar profiles. tools that make it interesting to architects. thinking tool, rather than a fully featured 3D design system. Forget about being superHere, you’ve got the full set, from lines, circles and arcs to ellipses and polygons, as Understanding the UI precise and building complex models well as modifiers such as The first thing you need, of course, is an iPad, together with the Apple Pencil, Shapr3D won’t shape then use a variety of operations ’’ offset and trim. One sketch entity particularly worth noting are splines. You have work without it. If you’ve got those (Booleans, chamfers, fillets, shells etc.) to two options: CV-driven (control vectors for already, you’re good to go. If you’re look- combine those primitive forms into the control point splines) or fitted points. To ing at buying an Apple Pencil, then it’s shape you want. lay down your CVs, you drag from the worth noting that the newer Pencil 2 may As you fire up the system and work starting point, then push down on the not be compatible with an older iPad, as through the training exercises, it’s clear Pencil to place the next CV, moving the old devices lack the wireless charging that the team behind this app have made onwards. At the last point, you just lift up offered by the latest versions of the iPad the most of the combination of inputs the Pencil. Those CVs are all editable for Pro. Once you’re up and running with the available – namely, the Apple Pencil and position and, in the case of fitted splines, hardware, it’s time to download Shapr3D your fingers! The system can tell the dif- for curvature too. from the Apple App Store and fire it up. ference between the two and works nicely Alongside the sketch creation entities,

As with most such apps, Shapr3D offers around this. For example, if you’re simply there are also constraints available, a number of licensing options. There’s a navigating a model, you can use your fin- including tangency, perpendicularly, con‘freemium’ version, which gives you a lim- gers to spin, pan and zoom as per normal. centricity, parallelism (horizontal/vertical) ited set of tools (e.g. data translation both The Pencil, by contrast, will just rotate. and symmetry, to name but a few. These in and out is limited) as well as a limited When it comes to focusing on a specific can be applied on the fly where the system on the number of designs (just two). With task, double-tapping a face on the model can infer them, or applied after the fact. the paid-for version, you get a one-month with your finger, snaps your view to that One thing that’s difficult to get to used, free trial and thereafter, it’s $25 per month face and you can start sketching profiles. particularly if you’re used to traditional

sketching in mainstream design systems, is the dimensioning workflow for sketches. Rather than requiring formal dimensions, Shapr3D works on selections and pops up possible dimensions (click line, get a length dimension. Click two lines, get an distance or angular dimension etc.) - if you formalise then and dial in the values, then they persist during any subsequent edits to that sketch. You are able to construct well-built, robust sketches - it just take a little getting used to.

While the sketch tools give you drawing capabilities, you’ll really want to be able to build those sketches into 3D forms. The majority of tools to do this are found in the Add and Tools toolbars. Add provides you with construction geometry, such as planes and axes, as well as the ability to import geometry from the iPad file system. It will also enable you to bring in an image as a reference - and considering the usefulness of Shapr3D for working up a concept, this makes huge sense.

While those Add tools are useful, the real meat is found in the Tools toolbar. Here, you’ll get access to a number of standard and familiar feature operations. All of the classics are there: extrude, revolve, sweep, loft and shell. There are also a number of Booleans (Union, Subtract, Intersect), as well as geometry projection, offsetting and a face replace. If you’ve used direct modelling operations before, then you’ll be familiar with how these systems work. It’s not so much about creating a linear history of geometric features, as much as creating, hacking, chopping and removing geometry to achieve the form you want.

In the most recent release, the team has introduced an element of adaptivity to the user interface. Based on your current selection, the interface adapts to present you with a list of operations that can be applied using that selection. For example, if you select a single face, you can carry out a number of operations such as offsets or move, extrusions or cuts. If you then select an edge, then the selection of operations available filters down to operations that might use those two selections – such as a revolve or a loft etc.

If you’ve not used direct modelling tools before, one point that’s worth considering is how the face selection and move tools (found in the Transform toolbar) work, as opposed to the features such as extrude.

If you have an existing face that you want to either cut into or out of your solid model, you can select the face and a small glyph appears giving you a direction. Drag that into the part and it cuts. Drag it away from the part and it will extrude that face. If you want a more complex extrusion with, say, draft added, then use the extrude command – you’ll see the draft angle glyph appears on screen.

Assembly organisation While Sharp3D doesn’t have the formal assembly modelling tools of a fullyfledged mechanical design system, it does have enough to allow you to create and manage a more complex set of parts or blocks within a single file.

Obviously, this can be done at the body level, but if you open up the manager dialogue, you’ll see a list of bodies, planes and sketches. These are given default names, but can be easily renamed, by swiping the entry to the left. You can also delete it or zoom it into the window. This window also allows you to group together bodies into folders, which act as informal subassemblies or complex mass models.

Shapr3D? This is perhaps the most surprising part, considering the nature of the system. With the Pro version, you’re able to export your data as a Parasolid file (either X_t or X_b), STEP, IGES or OBJ. There’s also an STL export option, too - the only export option, in fact, in the freemium version.

You’re also able to export a basic 2D drawing from the system as a DWG or DXF file that includes all of the dimensions you’ve placed (and locked). There are also some nice screenshotting tools that remove the UI elements and might be useful for sharing with a colleague or throwing into a presentation.

In conclusion Over the years, a number of 3D modelling-adjacent tools have popped up on the Apple App Store, only to quickly disappear again quite quickly. Why? The answer is that unless a user really understands upfront what they’re doing with the platform, and the various interaction methods that are not only supported but also expected, it’s very likely that the system will make little sense to them.

I’m delighted to say that the Shapr3D team has taken a very different approach. Its focus on combining finger-based interactions with the more precise input offered by the Apple Pencil makes complete sense.

If you’ve used a direct modelling system such as SketchUp before and are familiar with its modelling techniques, then you’ll be able to jump right in. If not, then you might need some time to get your head around the workflow. There are a few tutorials that show architecturally focused workflows, but the bulk of the tutorials are for mechanical design – they’re equally as useful for learning the ins and outs of the tool.

If I had just one tip to help you get up to speed, it’s to consider this as a conceptualisation and 3D thinking tool, rather than a fully featured 3D design system. You just need to forget about being super-precise and building complex models. Instead, just sketch, hack, slice and experiment and see what you get.

It’s also worth considering Sharp3D purely from a workflow perspective. If you already have an iPad as part of your workflow and day-to-day work toolset, then you’ll probably be receiving CAD geometry in your email and/or via file share. Shapr3D allows you to view those files using robust Parasolid-based tools and potentially make very quick edits to them. Just the ability to view is useful. If the Sharp3D team also built in a few mark-up tools, that would make the app even more useful.

If you’re curious about what this system can do, download it, get yourself an Apple Pencil and give it a whirl. There’s literally nothing to lose. You’ll find a system that lets you sketch out a quick model, try out an idea, and see what you get and it could quickly become an important step in your conceptualisation and ideation process.

■ shapr3d.com

Architectural design & the iPad: what else is there?

To review Sharp3D, I invested in a more up-to-date iPad. To be frank, I’d stopped using these devices after their first generation, for a number of reasons. But it turns out there’s been some wonderful work over the intervening period. The new iPad Pro is a great example of the build quality that Apple offers.

The Apple Pencil is really something else. For those who have been using a lagging stylus and become accustomed to working around parallax problems resulting from poor calibration of pen input devices, it’s a refreshing step change.

The Pencil 2, in particular, with its magnetic attachment and wireless charging is practically a miracle. (On the subject of charging, I’ve gone fully USB-C of late, so having the iPad use the same connectors makes life a lot easier, should we ever start travelling again).

It’s also worth noting that multitasking on the iPad is vastly improved, particularly using window-in-window or split screen. It may take a few minutes to work out how to do this, but it makes working with multiple applications much easier.

The other thing that impressed me about the standard device and software set-up is the Sidecar application. If you’re a desktop/ laptop Mac user, this lets you view your main screen on the iPad as a second screen. In these days where we’re all trying to work efficiently from home, that’s really valuable (not least in terms of space-saving), especially if you’re missing your office-based multi-monitor set-up.

If you’ve seen Astropad for the iPad/Mac, it’s like that - but being native to your hardware, it doesn’t cost you £10 a month to use. However, Astropad has a few benefits in terms of control and there’s a client application coming soon that would let you use your iPad as a companion, pen-enabled device with Microsoft Windows.

Exploring the App store Since I had the iPad in hand and the kids hadn’t managed yet to steal it to play AR games, I figured now was a good time to explore what other applications for the designer and engineer it could run.

One system I was keen to try out was Procreate for digital sketching. While I could wax lyrical about how smart Procreate is, how the drawing experience, brush development and user experience is wonderful, the simple fact is that it costs just £9.99 - no subscriptions, no ongoing license fee. That’s a ridiculous bargain, especially compared to the cost of a license for Adobe’s Photoshop or Illustrator. If you’re exploring Procreate for design purposes, then I also highly recommend the Procreate brush sets from Spencer Nugent, available at sketch-a-day.com.

Morphilo’s Trace application also has to be a front runner. While it’s a sketching app, it has some serious tools for the architectural designer – import and scaling of plans and maps (even direct from google maps), AR tools for perspective and much more. Considering it’s $17.99 for a professional license for a year, that’s another bargain that’s worth exploring (there’s a freemium version too).

Another product to consider is the venerable SketchBook from Autodesk - one of the first sketching systems and still one of the best.

Beyond sketching The iPad Pro isn’t just for sketching and modelling - the 2020 model features built-in LiDAR scanning capabilities and mobile mapping startup Sitescape is developing a reality capture app to take advantage. The software allows users to to create dimensionally accurate point cloud datasets that can be used for progress monitoring, documentation, and remote site access/collaboration. According to the developers, accuracy is said to be around +/- 1” for linear measurements, while the max range of the LiDAR sensor is 15 feet.