Some time ago after thinking about it for many years, decades, after many half starts and balks trying to scratch at it, I put it down like this. This is what thinking through your design, means, described on 1 page in 2 columns, cyan on black background:
Thinking it through, all the way through.
Note the interplay (see the linked 1 pager), which _is_ thinking.
Almost all of the software in use in AEC for the last 30 years has made no use at all of the digital model in participating in this interplay that _is_ thinking.
I have a lot more to say about that, as I’ve been saying since 2007 and working on software that does involve the model in that interplay. But that, although it spread to 9 different software companies was, pushed aside by one totally dominant app that still doesn’t do it.
And no one else pushed the initial concept any further forward in any software. I have, conceptually, a great deal, in writing at my website, as many people know. I won’t repeat any of that here.
But I just add this:
Even when software does bring the digital model into this interplay that is thought (see the linked 1 pager), there is still something fundamental going on that is never talked about:
No digital model (nor physical reality itself) has ever meant anything to anyone, without an adequate mental model in formation.
Anyone can verify this with the simplest thought exercise in 2 seconds:
- Try waking up in the morning and walking to wherever the coffee apparatus is in your house, without an adequate mental model of your environment in place and accessible. You won’t make it to the coffee otherwise.
That mental model is put into formation, and sharpened, by _this exercise_ (see the one pager at the link), and almost all the software in AEC omits the digital model completely from this exercise, leaving the interplay (see the 1 pager) to be performed as mental exercise alone, with no assist whatsoever from the digital model.
What a STRANGE state of affairs after all these decades.
TANGERINE FOCUS 