@unknownuser said:
thanks for sharing your observations!
I just hope they are taken as a sincere effort to expose some ideas about what could be done.
@unknownuser said:
I believe that web based, multi user environments are next step of computer applications development, which offers huge potentials.
I said that accessing and retrieving the information has to be web based; this is not the same as applications should be web-based. You could for example write a specification using Ms Office or Google Docs; the result is a document that has to be read and interpreted. It is like writing a cheque to ask the teller for cash rather than using an object, a card, to make the transaction. If we can give every object the ability of such a card then we can automate most of the more menial tasks. Yes we can!
@unknownuser said:
However, as long as we stick to SketchUp, we are limited to its API and the features SU offers.
No this is not true ever since Sketchup introduced the web dialog. And of course you know that you can generate objects from plain text. And if you know how to do that to make cities you only need to be given the criteria for nanotubes or galaxies to assemble them. Well how about more down-to-earth things, say, a desk or an open plan office. (Modelur a single storey building with equal size tower blocks at each corner; turn it upside down and scale it; make lots of copies and space them out with scaled down roads in between.)
@unknownuser said:
Of course we would love to see SU become web based application, where multiple users would be able to share information and interact with the model simultaneously.
It does not need to be on the web for the interaction. Participants just take appropriate parts of the plain text records, via file sharing perhaps, and feed them to different applications or devices to generate models, animations, diagrams, collages, text and so forth, and to pass back the results of their work.
@unknownuser said:
For now, we can only hope one day SU Team surprises us...
Don't think like that. The team is brilliant at 3D software. What we are talking about is operating systems for different activities. Just like bar coding is the basis for operating supermarkets.
I read the rest of your note with some interest but I don't think it useful for me to comment on urbanism. I did take an interest when I first discovered OPS but after all the razzmatazz of the BIMStorms, it seemed to me more solid and useful to try and work from bottom up.
But I would just like to return to the business of selling TV's by weight. At the time the vendors knew no better - most things in China are still sold by weight (even elastic bands). But it was soon realised that TV weight was not the proper measure, and the vendors took up other means to demonstrate its worth. And really that's what we should be doing about any design - assembling, animating and testing models of real things to demonstrate credible technical and social outcomes, not compliance with some density ordinance.
And finally a couple of quotes from Atomic Architecture in support of demonstration versus square footage.
"Few groups have the financial resources or political clout to implement alternative approaches, simulations or tests for regulations, but there are some examples. In the 1980’s, Foster Associates commissioned a complete scale model of the North shore of Hong Kong Island, and a wind tunnel test to simulate a typhoon. They were questioning the validity of a stringent regulation that had a dramatic affect on the appearance and cost of a curtain wall. This unsolicited test resulted in the rewriting of the relevant code."
These days we might employ computerised clout.
And one more:
"When society and architecture meet at a Public Hearing for a proposed new development, like for a new publicly sponsored airport, is the inquiry a search for compatible values or a forum to negotiate the best deals for the factions represented? Are the success ratings of the deals based on a full understanding of the implications? The proposers, the owners and their architects, are forced to be specific, while the audience is free to apply whatever values they consider pertinent at the time. The dilemma is that to be specific, the proposers have to present visual material for their design concepts, even though they may have a five year design program ahead of them. However preliminary the proposals, no words or markings will effectively subdue the strength of subjective judgment.
Supposing the tables are turned, and the proposers provide one thousand or ten thousand options of what the development might look like, based on their own criteria. The proposers could ask the audience what criteria they would like to see amended based on what they saw, and then show them the results. The process would be less of an inquiry and more a symposium to identify compatible values."
Criteria is the key.
Chris
