Above left: Revit Plan w/ CAD underlay….. Above right: Progress shot of 3D model

Weekly Hours: 16.75

Total Hours: 61 hours

Summary:

Monday (4):

•  Bathroom Layouts (Project Planning & Design)
• Kitchen Equipment Schedule (Project Planning & Design)

Tuesday (4)

• Kitchen Modeling (Project Development & Documentation)

Wednesday (4.5)

• Kitchen Modeling (Project Development & Documentation)
• Website Meeting (Practice Management)

Thursday (4.25)

• Kitchen Modeling (Project Development & Documentation)
• Presentation Layout (Project Development & Documentation)

This week my main focus was developing a 3d model of the cafeteria kitchen for the prototype school design. Using a schedule of food service equipment from a prior project, I tracked down 3d models equipment. It was helpful that as a public project usually three or more suppliers are listed for each piece of equipment. There is really an incentive for companies to have Revit/SketchUp/CAD files ready to download along with their spec sheets as it determines what brands you will list and show in your drawings. My biggest challenge this week was assembling a modular shelving unit from posts and shelves by the Eagle Group. I had to use type parameters to set the size of the shelves and instance parameters for options to toggle on/off such as wheels or stationary models. It is fun to push the parameters of your family and see where it breaks down and where you are missing necessary constraints.

The highlight of my week was sitting in on a meeting with Cameron, Greg  and a firm of website designers to discuss how to build a new and better firm website from scratch. We talked about how to use search engine optimization (SEO) to drive more traffic to the site; for instance no one really likes reading ‘firm blog’ pages, but because they have so much text with buzzwords they are useful in placing your site higher in Google searches. Another takeaway was the emphasis on the homepage and use of the ‘hero’ image which sets the tone for the entire site. One concern was how to make sure the format for a computer was just as user-friendly when pulled up on a mobile device. About 80% of all website traffic is actually coming from mobile devices now, which will shape the way website designers approach the user interface and design.