TGN is equipment for looking

Why evolve equipment for visual close study (VCS)? Pragmatic reasons

These few short articles describe a forthcoming evolution in the development of equipment for visual close study (VCS) within digital models of all kinds in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry and similar industries:

We all might reflect on the function of technical drawings, a function inseparable from models (mental and digital). The function is multifold:

1. Technical drawing is an expression of the act of looking somewhere specific within a model, the act of visual close study (VCS) and its articulation.  

2. There at that location, we evaluate, is everything that SHOULD be shown THERE actually shown there? Is anything that matters THERE missing?

3. Finally at some point after the long work of model development and review, someone with authority to do so, AFFIRMS the status of the questions in (2).

4. Along the way, an INTERPLAY is engaged between these many expressions of visual close study (VCS), which articulate the act of narrowed attentive visual focus, and the wider expansive environment of the whole of the project model. This interplay is a back and forth continuous dynamic. There is good argument that this -is- the basic observable dynamic of thought itself, that the wide/narrow (environment/focus) interplay is a machine of thinking, the engine of thought. 

The idea that one side of the interplay can either be discarded or stuck in a non-evolving centuries-old form of expression and externalized from the digital model is simply self-defeating and counterproductive, maximally. 

I draw your attention to item 4 in particular and emphasize it. For 30+ years now of marketing and development of digital modeling software in the AEC market, VCS has been left largely undeveloped. 

This undermines the modeling endeavor itself. The engine of thought itself is left underpowered. 

This is a very significant omission from software capability, missing for more than 30 years now.

And it really is obvious:

If a company invents the automobile, unhitches the horse, but fails to design, manufacture, and install a motor… and blames others, that’s well and truly analogous to what AEC software corporations have given us.

Now come on. Think about this.

These are pragmatic reasons for evolution in VCS (visual close study) equipment, new and better equipment for looking within digital models of all kinds in the AEC industry.

There are fundamental reasons for evolution in VCS equipment too, reasons foundational at a deeper level. I dig into these a bit here: https://tangerinefocus.com/an-engine-of-thinking/

Why evolve equipment for visual close study (VCS)? Fundamental reasons and the engine of thought

It doesn’t matter how models are generated; the outcome is always the same: 

In AEC and similar industries, models are highly complex visual spatial environments that impress on us fundamental cognitive burdens and pragmatic realities the sum of which shape our sense-making imperative, our generalized need for adequate interpretive power in support of complex tasks in very complex environments.

No matter the manner of model generation, whether models are computationally generated via directed graphs, are made by ‘generative AI’, or made by natural intelligence, ‘NI’ (stick built by human hand), or whether they’re made by device via photogrammetry, laser scanning, gaussian splatting, NeRF’d, etc., software development serving AEC remains naïve of the burdens and realities placed on everyone engaged with models, 5+ decades in.

VCS and Generative AI: a co-evolution