ROARING TWENTIES HERE WE GO

This will be my (last post of 2019) first post of 2020


An image of me on stage at Autodesk University Middle East.  That was a great event.  Those who have shown an interest in taking part in Project Notre Dame, please be patient, we haven’t forgotten you.

I uploaded my presentation so that should be coming up on the Autodesk site before too long.  In the meantime you can download a precis of my talk at the link below.



https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Olsu-dThzWzQMWMCQKL_u4oVX6Vk8_ez/view?usp=sharing



And here's the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teKDOurIb6U





Over xmas, I put a bit of work in on the chancel.  The raised floors and steps were roughed out very rapidly for AU Las Vegas, so I went back and adjusted levels.  Also looked a bit more carefully at where the various sculptural elements are placed.  We need a couple of kneeling kings and a Pieta (mesh objects) to make this more convincing, but it’s improving steadily.  Ryan is taking a look at the choir stalls, so I’m looking forward to saying bye-bye to another of my “broad-brush placeholders”.

The imagery coming out of the Enscape 3d plug-in is amazing as usual, but perhaps we should also give a nod to the hidden-line views in the sheet set.  This is a classic architect’s approach to conveying information in a crisp and measurable format and of course these views are updating automatically as we add detail and adjust proportions in the model.  Kudos to Alfredo again for his clever cutaway views.

Having said that, I couldn’t resist some foreshortened perspective views to accentuate the drama of this sacred space. 

We still don’t have access to any point cloud data, which is getting a bit annoying to be honest.  The TruView site that was placed in the public domain is really useful, but the Z coordinates that this reports are relative to a tripod positioned up on the triforium gallery, so it take a bit of calculation to relate these to Revit levels and offsets.  I have set up a file to keep track of this, establishing a survey point at the tripod height so that we can compare project levels and survey levels using two types of spot coordinates in Revit.  A bit tedious, but what can you do?

I spent a couple of days carefully adjusting arches and vaults so that the ribs sit on top of their columns and pilasters, plus fit together closely in both directions.  The vaults I am using at present don’t have curved ridge lines.  Maybe Alfredo will remedy that eventually.  For the moment I am concentrating on getting the ribs to fit together nicely as they sprout off in 8 different directions.  

Getting inside the space with my VR headset on is particularly useful to spot gaps and misalignments.  The worst cases now are around the base of the Bell Towers.  Lots of one-off conditions here.  Will take another weekend to sort that out.

Finally, something popped up on Linked-In that is worth a comment.  Obviously, we are not the only people inspired to model Notre Dame.  There is an official BIM model being constructed for the restoration project.  It serves a different purpose to ours and is unlikely to go into the public domain.  But there are also several mesh-models floating around.  Apparently one of these appeared on French TV as an Augmented Reality model in the studio.  


Again, the intended purpose of the model is important.  It was there to focus a discussion and indicate locations where temporary shoring is being used.  It was a news report, not a long-term historical study like ours.  So it would be unfair to comment on the accuracy of the model, except to note that they have made the usual “mistakes” like missing the way the triforium galleries turn the corner at the transepts and the smaller window types at both ends of the nave.

No big deal, but I feel vindicated …  “study history with BIM”