The CAD Insider

Buildings Getting Weirder

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31, 2009 - Many years, an architect rationalized the sameness, the boxiness of residences with this lamentation, "House are built around the 4'x8' sheet of plywood." But in the world of modern architecture, such pedestrian design constraints, such as stock sizes of materials, seem to have thrown out the window. In fact, as I sit in the Smart Geometry Conference, one of the buildings being shown has more in common with the runaway blancmange in Woody Allens's Sleeper than the typical office building. Furthermore, its skin, as it were, reacts to the environment, its pores open and close to ensure the comfort of its occupants.

courtesy of smartgeometry.com

Welcome to the new world of modern architecture. Frank Gehry, who first brought curvy buildings to public attentioin, may not have been constrained by sheets of plywood, but was constrained nevertheless by architectural CAD software. He had to resort to CATIA to liberate his design. The concept of organic shapes -- and functions -- seems to now being led by the Smart Geometry organization. Bentley is a big champion of generative components ("GC," as they are being called) and has flow in a bunch of us journalists to make sure word gets out.

picture courtesy of  www.abbeyoffices.com

Curvy buildings have been nothing less than a revolution. Leading architecture firms, freed from the the gravity of convention, seem to be competing to make the most whimsical of shapes for us to work and live in. Of course, the media, which had also become quite bored, has pounced on just about every such building brought to completion, thereby glorifying the art. In fact, London's "Gherkin" threatens to displace even the iconic Tower Bridge as the symbol of the city.

So you can bet that every architecture student or practicing architect drools over pictures of curvy buildings and swoopy shapes, all while completing projects like boxy houses and strip malls. Kinda reminds me of 3D ten years ago. Though solid models were being splashed across covers of all the CAD magazines, the bills were being paid with 2D CAD and paper drawings.

Though most of us have accepted 3D as a standard, it is not clear if curvy buildings are a foregone conclusion. Will it be like with automobiles, once as curvy as a tool shed have scarcely any flat shapes left at all? 

Don't Give Up

See enough gloom and doom forecasts and you may feel like throwing in the towel. Seems like American Machinist has. Their editor in chief opens with his magazine with an editorial titled "The Collapse of Manufacturing." He cites huge drops in industrial production in US, but also in Germany and Asia. He tries to end upbeat saying its no time to quit, but the net effect is demoralizing. If I was an American machinist, I'd just want to retire.

Luckily, I had also picked up Today's Machining World, in which editor Lloyd Graff, recounts drilling for oil in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. They had drilled 72 exploratory oil wells -- as agreed by management. They found nothing.  Rather than give up, they pieced scrap tubes together to drill one more. Nothing. On the 74th, a gusher. It turned out to be be Amoco's biggest discovery in America.

Micromachining - Dancing on the Head of a Pin

LOS ANGELES, CA (WESTEC), March 30, 2009 - The bright spot in this economy may be really, really small. To be precise, it is smaller than a thousandth of of an inch and goes by the name of micromachining. The market for micro machined medical devices alone is predicted to be $44 billion by 2011, according to Micro Manufacturing magazine.

I've just spent a day at WESTEC in Los Angeles. The isles at the LA Convention center were far from packed. There was not even a line at the inhouse Starbucks -- a sure sign the show is hurting. Most of the show is devoted to the machining market in the US, an industry most have conceded to overseas firms.

I scooped up a bunch of publications for the flight home, including Micro Manufacturing. I was fascinated. Micromanufacturing is a true frontier. When the parts are so small, people can't even figure out how to hold them, much less assemble them. A Timken ball bearing assembly fits into a workspace of 0.025" -- how do you deburr that? How do you hold it down when you machine it? How do you measure to see if it is within spec? Holes in molecular sieves defy even the drills bits that are pictured next to matchheads and dimes that, by comparison, look as big as Jupiter.

So why is working at a such a tiny scale -- orders of magnitude smaller -- so very promising. Because that is the scale in which so many important things are happening. Cells problems, laser surgeries, imbedded drug delivery machines, many such examples are listed -- enough to make you fell like a giant with clumsy tools. A doctor's scalpel looks is now a blunt object.

What's the alternative? It may not yet exist. Is that not a frontier? A place to make a million, or millions, a way turn around your company. We as a country may be dying trying to make good cars, but maybe we're just thinking too big. 

Now for Something Completely Different - A Reading List

Please excuse this digression from the world of CAD. After the last email is sent out and the IM dialog peters out, I close my laptop and look for something to read before bed that has nothing to do with CAD or engineering -- heck, it may even be non-technical. Yet, somehow, almost everything I am reading gives me some inspiration or knowledge that allows me to do my job a bit better the next day.

Have a book you'd like to share? Please suggest it as a comment to this post.

Here's what is on my night table:

1. The Space Between Us, by Thrity Umrigar, novel contrast Mumbai servants with the privileged family they work for
2. Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson, coming down from a failed attempt on K2, author stays at a village too poor to have a school, so he builds one, then another...
3. Bicycling Medicine, by Arnie Baker, great info on sports nutrition so you can find out went wrong on your last ride
4. When You're Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris, essays by the funniest writer in America (sorry, Dave Barry)
5. In Bolivia, Eric Lawler, at a yard sale, I wondered how some one could write a whole book on a place I could not describe with one sentence
6. 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time, by Mark Jacobson, a 'semi-dysfunctional' family goes around the world
7. Intoxication, by Ronald Siegel, physiology and biology of chemical addiction. Legend has it an ancient goatherd saw his flock get frisky after eating certain berries, leading to coffee.
8. Dreams of My Father, Barack Obama, an introspective look, includes childhood in Indonesia and Kenya
9. Does Anybody Eat Wasps?, New Scientist, 101 answers, may be to one of your weird questions

Recently Finished

• Smile While You're Lying, Chuck Thompson, expose on the travel media. You will never want to pick up another travel magazine.
• Ultra Marathon Man, Dean Karnazes, who orders a pizza delivered to him during a run and eats it while running. Anything goes when you are running 200 miles at once!
• An Imperfect Offering, by James Orbinski, a past president of Doctors Without Borders writes of experience in Somalia, Rwanda, more, and reveals how big pharmaceutical companies ignore plight of the diseased poor.