OSArch Community

Target functionalities / real world outcomes list

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    In the meeting I asked a question about target functionality - ie. is there a list somewhere of what goals are out there, things that can be achieved with open source software in this space, demo projects.

    @Moult provided the BlenderBIM IFC vs. Revit IFC features list which he suggested could be evaluated as a proxy for potential uses. However, BIM is currently predominantly oriented toward large scale commercial and industrial architecture, so even though as a programmer I can see the opportunities it's not sufficiently well grounded for the rest of us.

    Another participant suggested Built Smart finalists, but again these are generally vague corporate workflow enhancement assertions and not feet on the ground outcomes.

    I was thinking about real world outcomes more like:

    • get a site survey done

    • model an architectural concept

    • perform shadow study

    • perform structural analysis

    • produce planning drawings

    • model projected vegetation change in landscape over time

    • generate maintenance schedule

    • generate materials (eg. door/window/cladding/panels) schedules

    • model existing building

    ... etc.

    I think structuring information around how open source tools and workflows can be used to achieve these sorts of goals would help to generate more interest here from a broader audience and contribute to enticing people away from existing closed source defaults.

    @duncan this may be useful for your web content plan. See also the graphviz-based potential workflow diagram I mocked up over here explaining the sorts of pathways available for site surveys.

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    @duncan To generate graph SVGs like that you can either use command line like dot -Tsvg somefile.dot >somefile.svg or you can use a frontend like DotEditor or one of those listed here. It's also possible to put them on a webpage and have the browser render them with viz-js (which is also a neat tool for playing around with graph descriptions to learn the syntax).

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    Thanks @globalcitizen they look interesting. yeah, we do need to find a good way to show some example workflows. Sadly I haven't found time do to any more work on this.

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    I've now made a quick start to a workflow list for architecture: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Architecture_workflows

    I'm thinking once we've done one for architecture we can look at how we deal with overlap with the workflows of other disciplines. It didn't take me long to realize that such divisions become false and illusory in a BIM workflow - even when you're just trying to write a list of software ...

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    @globalcitizen I changed my mind and made one page for all AECO https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=AECO_Workflow_Examples a search for "workflow" would have brought the new page up. When we have enough content to split it up by discipline we can look into that again.

    I hadn't looked closely at your examples, sorry. We should totally incorporate those workflow examples in the wiki if you agree that's a good place for them. Is that something you'd like to do?

    I've started a page header template & category for workflow examples and added them to this page: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=The_Mad_Scientists_Lair

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