Read about Rob Snyder’s proposal, The Form of Engagement, for evolution in the form of visual engagement with modeled worlds in AEC, evolution in the equipment for looking — at, for close study of — any combination of environments, real, physical, mental, digital.
There are fundamental reasons that technical drawing isn’t replaceable. I first encountered arguments 20 years ago, in 2003, from industry leaders calling for drawing’s abandonment, digital modeling replacing it. 20 years is a long time, so anyone saying it today isn’t saying anything new.
Far from it.
Yet in the face of 20 years of this argument, drawing persists intractably.
And the reasons are not, as many often say, attributable to human error, or stubbornness, to unwillingness to adapt to change, and so on. Rather, the reasons are fundamental.
The real barrier is that mental models, digital models, and the real world, are all in the same category: they’re all ‘environments’.
While drawing is something else entirely, not an environment. Far from it. Drawing is ‘equipment for looking at environments’, for close study.
And it’s here, with this equipment, that we articulate. We think. We make things clear. What must be made clear, is made clear. To us, and to others.
Environments on their own, stripped of equipment for looking, and for making things clear, don’t.
They can’t do that.
I’d like to continue with this background discussion some more before moving into the proposal for what can, and must, change and improve in this area. Allow me to repeat the line I started with:
JUST AS DRAWING is FOR CLOSE STUDY OF MENTAL MODELS, TGN is FOR CLOSE STUDY OF DIGITAL MODELS.
Let’s make clear what that means. Take the first half:
In architecture, engineering, construction, and operation, (AECO) and similar fields like machine engineering and so on, modeled environments are complex. And these make relentless demand for complex tasks. Let’s group those, complex tasks, by domain:
- imagining/planning
- designing/regulating
- building
- and operating environments highly complex
So we have this chain:
- Environments spawn tasks. Environment as taskmaster, it imposes its demands as tasks.
- Tasks require equipment adequate to the task. We equip ourselves in various ways but first in our tool kit is equipment that helps us look, see, think, and understand in support of useful action.
I have more to say and will continue in part 2 soon. Until then, please have a look at the TGN proposal website: https://tangerinefocus.com
Continued here in part 2:
OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models 