I continue my mission to evolve the form of expression of technical drawing that otherwise has remained essentially unchanged in form for hundreds of years.

Technical drawing is useful in the AEC industry and similar industries. AEC is architecture, engineering, and construction (of buildings, bridges, roads, railways, dams, power plants, water and sewer systems, and such things, civil infrastructure generally). Similar industries, I can say, generalizing like this, are:

…any industry in which things that are complex, and are to be designed and then ‘built’ and used, and that those things occupy space in the world (so, in other words, NOT ideas or text for example) and are amenable to visual inspection… So, for example, things similar to AEC include medical imaging, molecule development (chemistry, drugs), industrial products (any kind, coffee machines, bicycles), vehicles (rockets, ships, cars), maps and mapping, geospatial visualization, storytelling, artistic media, instruction manuals… ‘TGN’ (proposed here) is equipment for visual close study for interpretive and communicative purposes, of anything spatial, visual, and complex.

In the ‘90s, there was an advertising campaign from the German company BASF. They aired TV commercials in the United States in which they said,

“We don’t make ___. We make ___ better.”
https://youtu.be/ZJHPpsb3FzM?si=vbBMpY9auScy5ELK

Of course I found it on YouTube:

TGN is like that.

To start with, modeling software and technical drawing software are 2 different things. There are many commercial software products of both types.

TGN doesn’t make modeling software. TGN makes modeling software better.

It puts modernized, better, VCS equipment (explanation follows; keep reading) in digital models. In so doing, it sets up the possibility of competing later with software products for technical drawing, or likewise improving them. TGN makes technical drawing software better too, but TGN could, out in the future, at least theoretically, replace technical drawing software. That’s a possibility because of an important distinction: TGN shares the same function as drawing software (equipment for visual close study of models mental and digital).

TGN can not replace modeling software because modeling software has a completely different function: expression of spatial visual environments. I think everyone can see that spatial visual environments are not the same thing as equipment for looking at environments. Many people actually do confound these things. But they’re making serious category error.

Of course comments will be heard about data…, information…, so it’s worth noting here, regarding that what’s visible, and occupying space, in models is information-laden, full of data, this fact makes no impact on the distinction between an environment and the equipment for looking at it. Whether geometric elements in a model are data-laden or data-void, the distinction holds between a spatial visual environment, and the equipment for looking at it.

‘TGN’ is New Equipment for Looking

Here is a development proposal for evolution in our equipment for visual close study (VCS) of digital models, new equipment for looking, to be built into modeling software of all kinds in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry (and similar). This new equipment for visual close study, designated for now as ‘TGN’, will evolve and expand the role formerly played by ‘technical drawing’.

It is proposed to enter the market through an open source set of core features to be developed, shared, and promoted to existing and new software companies and relevant standards organizations (e.g., Open USD), with myriad business opportunities for software companies for extending beyond the open core with additional development serving more particular (less generalized as with the open core) market needs.

TGN is a set of features to be developed open source so they can be implemented in all existing and newcomer modeling softwares such as Revit, Solidworks, MicroStation, ArchiCAD, Onshape, Shapr3D, Blender and countless others. TGN does not make these modelers, it makes them better. Because: TGN supplies adequate equipment for visual close study, to be built-in to the models, so that users of those softwares, both model creators and downstream viewing users, can more easily and effectively ENGAGE those models and elevate their understanding of the models beyond superficial understanding to real understanding, more easily, more thoroughly, and even with more fun.

The centuries-old method of this kind of engagement, for interpretive visual close study of models mental and digital, is technical drawing, which is a media format that is externalized from those models. Formerly drawn by hand, since the early 1980s these have been made by CAD software, like AutoCAD, Dassault Draftsight, MicroStation, FreeCAD, Graebert, and many others).

Regarding those old-school applications for visual close study via technical drawing in it’s traditional form, well…Look:

TGN Phase 1: BASF’ing all modeling software (or all modeling softwares whose developers are not unthinking enough to refuse the improvement brought by TGN). We don’t make the model (or the modeler); we make the model better (see how, below; keep reading)

TGN Phase 2: well, phase 1 redefines visual close study (VCS) of models, so, now TGN is positioned to COMPETE AGAINST technical drawing software of the ancient kind, with the unfair advantage on our side of a vastly superior form of engagement with models via new equipment for VCS.

A path there

Prototype the 8 core features proposed for TGN’s industry Open Source core feature set, so that we can show, promote, and give away to the entire industry, a better format for visual close study of models. So, first priority is to prototype it. The 8 proposed features are described in short outline form near the top of the proposal page here: https://tangerinefocus.com/visual-engagement-with-modeled-worlds/

There is more detailed explanation of these same 8 features in the downloadable spec documents on the same page. There are also demo videos showing partial mockup of those 8 features.

Promote the prototype to existing and new software companies in the AEC space (and similar)

So, I was thinking of these steps:

Let’s avoid mistakes of the CAD industry past and make the future of drawing an industry standard, open source, core set of features that can be implemented in ANY modeling software of any kind. So:

Let’s get the open source TGN core features (there are 8 of them) built and shared in a developer community and promoted as an industry standard to Open USD https://aousd.org
At the same time (or after), work on an app/product as best of breed implementation of TGN including the open core features plus enhancements and ADDITIONAL FEATURES (for VCS expression) so we provide THE BEST EQUIPMENT FOR VISUAL CLOSE STUDY (VCS) anywhere. There will be various markets for this and it can be tuned for each. And, many companies and products can compete in this space.

How to get there

Find a developer partner who shares my understanding of why this matters and the market potential of it, and wants to help build either the open source core for everyone, or a company that builds product around this core, or both.
- I did this kind of thing once before: https://tangerinefocus.com/tgn/earlier-media-innovations/ Technically, the TGN proposal leapfrogs far beyond that earlier drawing-model fusion work (see the page about it) in form, mechanism, and utility. And on the business side, propagating to 9 different software companies, is not enough this time. TGN needs to go much bigger. Because: the industry need is much bigger. But people don’t know what they want or need, until you show it to them. That holds true among decision makers at software corporations. They’re no different than anyone else.
That (1) requires a potential partner capable of bootstrapping, or that I, or we, find angels who see the point of this and want to invest in getting it off the ground, from idea and specification into real working code and then product.

What and Why:

At the main page https://tangerinefocus.com/visual-engagement-with-modeled-worlds/, see the outline description of the 8 core features, as well as the expanded specification in the downloadable specification document. There are also demo videos on the page, and link to a playlist of more videos.

The selling points, the why:

1. Better engagement with models, during model creation, design, development… and downstream during project construction and later, operation.

2. Clearer understanding of complex tasks in complex environments.

3. Better, adequate understanding of the quality and utility of models, faster, easier, through a more visually interactive and informative form of visual engagement with models (compared to the alternative, visual close of study of models through a flat, externalized-from-the-model format, technical drawing)

4. Clarity regarding specific fundamental questions about models: Is the model ‘good enough? Is it adequate? Does it meet professional standard of care? Is it good enough and adequate EVERYWHERE or only somewhere(s), at some locations within itself? If it is the latter (it always is) then WHERE ARE THOSE LOCATIONS? TGN answers that question, in-situ, in the digital model. TGN allows a model author to say, HERE and here and here and here and here….) everything that SHOULD be shown HERE, IS shown here. Nothing that matters HERE is missing.

5. Affirmation. A user can make clear affirmation regarding the fundamental questions above in 4.

Models (mental and digital) are expansive, whole, complex visual spatial environments that exceed our cognitive grasp. In our mind, they’re fuzzy. We cannot digest them whole. They’re too much. We understand them as we do the real world, only superficially, and without specialized equipment for looking, we understand them only to the extent adequate to ordinary every day experience close at hand, like walking from one room to another and making a pot of coffee (but, there’s correspondence even there as well to higher level process: https://tangerinefocus.com/2023/07/28/real-and-modeled-reality-mental-models-views-tweeners-memory-wobble-and-my-kitchen-sink/ ).

For complex tasks, like designing and building a kitchen, or a house, or a solar farm, or a hospital, or a university building…, superficial understanding of the environment (the project) imagined, designed, and to be built and used, is not enough.

Specialized equipment is required to help us more profoundly engage those modeled environments through visual close study. This is typically done via technical drawing. Technical drawings are externalized from the digital models. They embody a format that has remained consistent for hundreds of years, at least. Their format remains unchanged since long before the advent of digital computing and software, let alone, long before the advent of digital models for AEC.

History of CAD https://tangerinefocus.com/2023/09/28/the-farther-the-tractor-pulls-the-drag-the-more-difficult-it-gets/ )
Examples of technical drawing and digital modeling: https://tangerinefocus.com/2023/10/24/model-automation-and-model-quality-on-a-graph/ )

So the question is, why, now that AEC digital modeling is already in its 5th decade (even older, actually), why would equipment for visual close study (VCS) OF MODELS remain stuck ONLY in its pre-digital-age format, flat, and externalized from the digital model?

Being stuck there, not evolving, not taking advantage of all of the capacity in the digital model for expression and engagement, with VCS contextualized in the model, is self defeating and counterproductive. Being stuck with VCS NOT EVOLVING undermines the digital modeling endeavor itself, as well as project outcomes.

TGN is the best among very very few proposals made for evolving VCS equipment.

On the main proposal page of the website, at the end of the main page, I put it like this:

CLEAR THINKING, CLEARLY CONVEYED

Clear thinking clearly conveyed is not a matter of leisure in technical domains. Overall, what has to be conveyed is adequate thought, adequate to complex tasks in complex environments. The mind has to be well and truly engaged in the creation of technical environments — models of buildings, machines, power plants, roads and railways, dams, airports, hospitals, and so on — and their interpretation, whether these models are mental, physical, or (and) digital.

Adequate equipment supporting that engagement is not optional.

Clear thought is demonstrated in the outcome, consideration of which includes:

INTERPLAY between the whole of the project and its parts. Something coherent, functional, aesthetic, sound, efficient, and so on, is brought forth through interplay between the whole of a project and its parts. How can we know if this goal is achieved, that the parts and the whole cohere? Simply put: we know by looking. There’s a parallel interplay, between a model of a thing, and our act of looking at it. These two things — the model, and our act of looking at it — are in interplay. The one informed by the other. The meaning of what we see when we narrow our attentive focus for a closer look is informed by the wider contextual whole of the model. And vice versa, the meaning of the whole is de-fogged by the sharpening effect of looking closely.

The looking needs to be systematic. We need adequate equipment for this. When we have and use that equipment, then an interplay is underway between a complex environment and our act and articulation of looking at it. In this interplay is thinking itself. Some say the interplay is thinking. In the interplay understanding grows. Or is built. Equipment for visual close study (VCS) therefore is vital, as it is one of the two components comprising thought itself. Thought is interplay between two components: the world, and our act of looking at it. There is abundant evidence for this.

CLARITY: Authors and viewers of digital models require clarity. Clarity comes from making things clear. A model — which tends to present itself as (or in) a blizzard of certainty — alone is not enough. Adequate equipment for looking first clarifies where you want someone to look within a model, and what you want them to see there. Through equipment for visual close study (VCS) our attentive focus is narrowed, articulated and communicated.

AFFIRMATION at various locations of VCS expression within a model:

that what should be shown here (at a VCS location), IS shown here.
that nothing that matters, here, is missing.

Traditionally, the equipment handling these affirmations (and clarity) is technical drawing, in its conventional form.

“I invest my attention, concern and focus here.” This already matters. A legally responsible professional designates a locus of attention.

“Here I affirm that what’s shown here meets my professional standard of care; everything that should be shown here IS shown here. Nothing that matters, here, is missing. I affirm it. You can rely on what you see here.”

And things of this nature. Basic things. Without these, an environment fills up with doubts and fog, the fog of thought not brought to adequate conclusion and lacking affirmation. The consequences of fog impend on model authors and model users alike, in different ways, none of which are good.

Paying attention through VISUAL CLOSE STUDY (VCS) is not optional and not replaceable. On the contrary, VCS is an irreplaceable component of THINKING. And, an irreplaceable component of BEING EFFECTIVE at all.

🌞

Drawing’s FORM of expression is compelled to EVOLVE, as it can and should IN NEW GROUND. The digital model is richer ground

OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models

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