Modelur 0.2.0 released!
-
**(20.7.2009) -**We are glad to announce the release of an updated version of Modelur, the SketchUp tool for parametric urban design.
What's new?
The new version of Modelur brings several new features and enhancements. The most important improvements are:
- Advanced manual editing of buildings.
- Enhanced user interface.
- Basic off-line mode.
- Support for both metric and imperial units.
- Export of urban control values to .csv file and saving of default parameters.
To learn more about the new features, please visit Modelur YouTube channel. The videos describing the improvements will be published in the upcoming week.
Version 0.2.0 (Pre-beta 2) is available free of charge for both, Mac OS X and Windows, to anyone registered to Modelur Pre-beta Partner Program at http://www.modelur.com.
Best regards,
Jernej -
Looking forward to testing it. -
@unknownuser said:
In contrast to traditional CAD tools, where the building is described by its width, length and height, Modelur uses parametric approach, in which the building can also be designed by a combination of desired final parameters, e.g. built area, gross floor area or number of storeys.
The thing that I find so weird is that such parametric "solutions" are always rooted in gross floor area. With all the computing power and storage, with Internet connectivity and 3D modeling doesn't anyone else think this mad? In my view we don't need more software we need a new approach that, in this case, actually defines the source of gross floor area calculations, and then manipulate the elements (the criteria) of the source rather than the summary.
Che
-
Hi Che,
thanks for your comment, we are always open for new suggestions to improve Modelur. Can you please explain in more detail what exactly do you mean by this:
@unknownuser said:
...a new approach that, in this case, actually defines the source of gross floor area calculations, and then manipulate the elements (the criteria) of the source rather than the summary.
Thanks and best regards,
Jernej -
@unknownuser said:
Hi Che
Che is a name I use when I'm feeling what I am writing about is a touch revolutionary. I also use Don Quixote as a reality check. But this is plain old Chris.
I very much like the idea of Modelur as a plugin to Sketchup principally because I believe that human activity just has to become object oriented. Sketchup or something similar might be a word processor offering 3D models instead of paragraphs to house and communicate information. Accessing and retrieving the information has to be web based; Modelur's use of a web dialog is a major step in that direction; Modelur's idea of reporting to a spreadsheet with comma separated values is decidedly not.
But if Modelur were to consider the structure of the information it could be developed into an application of universal use rather than its current narrow target. Very few people are involved in urbanism but there are millions in offices and elsewhere everyday dealing with information about objects. The world now has a giant machine of digital components and protocols that works because it uses the smallest elements of logic - on or off. We accept that quite happily, but when it comes to information we don't think twice, for example, about dissolving "design" into enormous unfathomable chunks of square feet, as we have done for as long as I can remember. It is safe ... or is it just safely delusional?
Not so long ago in Shenzhen on the border between China and Hong Kong televisions were sold by the catty*. Don't laugh we do the same with buildings.
Where does square footage come from? What happens if the law changes and all employees have to have 20 foot long desks? What if the leading office furniture brand makes dentist type chairs de rigeur or complete workstations exercise bikes? Do you change the circulation space factor from 40 to 60 percent, or from 60 to 40 percent (in which case do you lose an elevator?).
Well I could go on but maybe I'll turn quixotic again.
Chris
*catty - a measure of weight - in pragmatic China, 500 grams; in ex-British PC Hong Kong, 604.78982 grams
-
Hi Chris,
thanks for sharing your observations!
@unknownuser said:
I very much like the idea of Modelur as a plugin to Sketchup principally because I believe that human activity just has to become object oriented. Sketchup or something similar might be a word processor offering 3D models instead of paragraphs to house and communicate information. Accessing and retrieving the information has to be web based; Modelur's use of a web dialog is a major step in that direction; Modelur's idea of reporting to a spreadsheet with comma separated values is decidedly not.
I agree on that, I believe that web based, multi user environments are next step of computer applications development, which offers huge potentials. However, as long as we stick to SketchUp, we are limited to its API and the features SU offers. 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. For now, we can only hope one day SU Team surprises us...
@unknownuser said:
But if Modelur were to consider the structure of the information it could be developed into an application of universal use rather than its current narrow target. Very few people are involved in urbanism but there are millions in offices and elsewhere everyday dealing with information about objects. The world now has a giant machine of digital components and protocols that works because it uses the smallest elements of logic - on or off. We accept that quite happily, but when it comes to information we don't think twice, for example, about dissolving "design" into enormous unfathomable chunks of square feet, as we have done for as long as I can remember. It is safe ... or is it just safely delusional?
Not so long ago in Shenzhen on the border between China and Hong Kong televisions were sold by the catty*. Don't laugh we do the same with buildings.
Where does square footage come from? What happens if the law changes and all employees have to have 20 foot long desks? What if the leading office furniture brand makes dentist type chairs de rigeur or complete workstations exercise bikes? Do you change the circulation space factor from 40 to 60 percent, or from 60 to 40 percent (in which case do you lose an elevator?).
Well, Modelur was and is developed to serve one purpose only: to help anyone involved in process of urban design achieve better results faster. When talking about wider public interested in dealing with information about objects, one thing comes to my mind: GIS. That is exactly what it does and what it was created for.
The potential I see, when speaking of Modelur and GIS, is to connect them together. GIS as a base for delivering the information and Modelur as application which 'transforms' that information to 3D buildings. However, there is one obvious problem here: how to convert this GIS input data (i.e. land price, municipality regulations, laws, ...) to the buildings? And we are talking here only about the quantitative data, which can be converted by using more or less simple formulas. How about when it comes to less tactile information like interests of neighbours, social impacts on site.. how can we measure those? Of course we can assign some ponders to it and use some set of rules and algorithms to convert those, but in the end, would we trust that these would make better judgement of what the built environment should be than urban designer?
Clearly there would still have to be some professional, or group of them, behind to drive it. But then again, can we capture all the possible scenarios and input data one might need to convert it to plan of city development? Maybe yes, but the problem becomes exponentially more complex if we want to take all those aspects into account... and maybe some day (I keep my fingers crossed:-) Modelur will be able to do that! This could be done by means of using very flexible user interface, which would allow one to add as many parameters as needed and define them. On the other hand, there is always the option to add API to an application, yet most of end-users (at least in urban design) do not use it....
To conclude (for now), we have designed Modelur as a simple and straightforward application. We do not want to make it any more complicated as needed to make it usable in contemporary urban design practice. However, before releasing version 1, we have quite some things to add. Once we reach v1, we already have quite a few interesting ideas about further Modelur development, some quite close to what we are talking about here. And I will add this discussion to those ideas...
@unknownuser said:
Well I could go on but maybe I'll turn quixotic again.
No, not at all, I think you have opened very interesting topic here...
Cheers,
Jernej -
@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
Advertisement