@mtnarch said:
After what we've seen in Haiti, is this really how we (as not only architects and engineers, but also building designers) should be presenting things?
Hi Alan.
Yes, of course it is. Buildings collapse. It's as simple as that. We also have earthquakes in Britain, we've had a couple of tremors recently, but they are so very slight. Smoke or dust is a theatrical thing, remove that, because you don't want to upset others, and you start going down a very slippery slope (pardon the pun!). Britain is full of ghastly 1930's 'horror shows'. They are bland, and often take on a pale, watered-down reflection of the Arts and Crafts movement from the late 1800's. I don't need to know how smoke is made any more (Unity 3D does it really well, and works great with SketchUp too!), but if you watch the narrative of this visualisation, it's about clearing old ground for new. Yes, there is more than a passing resemblance to the terrible scenes in Haiti, but life has to go on in other parts of the world.
Where perhaps we should be projecting our skills as engineers and architects are through providing skills to prevent building collapse because of natural causes, such as earthquakes and severe winds (like tornados) for eg. In 2006, a large (well for English standards anyway), passed over this part of Birmingham, uprooting trees and tossing large vehicles up into the air, but many of the building structures were left standing, because they are made from brick. The devastation you see in places like the USA, is because the majority of buildings trashed by high winds are mobile homes and timber frame structures. Maybe this is for good reason too, because it is a lot cheaper to replace and/or restore.
Is this (the latter paragraph) what you were getting at? As I said, we don't really have a problem with earthquakes in Britain, so it is far easier to get away with buildings, built in the way that a company like Sainsbury's would have desired. Does that make sense?
regards,
Tom 
So I understand your reasons for this Mike. My next computer will be a desktop type (laptops give me neck ache, and monitor performance decreases slightly when a secondary display is plugged in, but I should point out that this is nowhere as bad as the performance using two displays when running XP). I intend to get a Mac Mini, which isn't that portable- just tiny, with a brick (but nice white shiny brick 
)
), that's got to be better than progressing with the present model?
