Awhile back we posted the process of taking a SketchUp model and converting it to a Revit family.   The process we detailed the steps we go through to get a model into Revit that would allow the user to modify and change the materials.  Here’s a link to the post. Blog post of steps for converting

It has turned out that many people would like to convert a SketchUp model to Revit and it is the most popular blog posting we have.  And so by popular demand by count of blog views.. we’ve made a video as part of our How2(TM) video series showing the process.

When converting SketchUp 3D models to Autodesk Revit the most important steps are the initial ones performed within SketchUp.  No matter how simple a model is, it is good to think of how it will be used, and how the layers and layer names will later affect the Revit model.

Creation of layers based on elements rather than colors or textures is important and will allow for more flexibility once the model is assigned materials within Revit.  Keeping these conventions similar throughout all conversions will be helpful when managing your project in Revit.

Once you get the hang of it and need to convert many models like we do here at FormFonts, here are some helpful hints…

1. When doing conversions try to stay in one program as long as possible so time is not wasted switching between programs.

2. When first converting models the area where most time was lost was entering the RGB value for materials in Revit to match to corresponding one in SketchUp. Before exporting models from SketchUp always match the layer color to the one that will be entered in Revit.  This way, one can quickly toggle back to SketchUp with only the Layer palette open and never need to waste time orbiting around the model or sorting through the materials palette to retrieve the RGB value.

We’ve found these tips useful after going through the standard workflow many times. Try experimenting in the beginning to see what works best for you.

16th Century cabinet makers wondered if ceruse might not also enhance woodgrains, et Viola! When applied to porous woods like oak, the white pigment fills in the grain, yet doesn’t affect the overall finish color of the wood.

Fig 1.  - Cerused Oak (or Limed Oak in Europe) is coming back in style in case goods, furniture, and furniture-as-art.  Custom Mizuki cabinets are shown here with vertical grain in Cerused Grey. Image courtesy of Venegas and Company.

Of course the modern version of this cabinet cosmetic is a non-toxic wax, instead of the deadly lead paste. And the resurgence of pale perfection is perfect for what I like to  call High-Touch Ascetics.. a sophisticated minimalism that contrasts rustic raw materials with functional high-tech… and high-touch finishes.

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Trend Textures™ (check out that ceramic backsplash) and Trend Colors™ are important because they drive interior design and architecture up-cycles. A really good Trend Texture – like Cerused Oak – instantly makes everything prior.. look pathetic and outmoded.

The only downside with Trend Textures™ is the moment you see them, you’ve got to instantly incorporate them into your designs. Why? To show your brilliant taste and cutting edge design sensibilities of course. But where to find 3D model stock this…    au courant?

FormFonts 3D has solved this problem with our living library of materials and textures. All can easily be applied to our 3D model stock for the very latest ascetic-aesthetic. Well, rather easily.. especially when you just watch-and-learn from our master modeler, Alan Fraser.

 Fig 2. -  Video of Alan Fraser projecting the Ceruse Oak texture onto various geometries in SketchUp. Learning is easy, when Alan shows us How2 ™.

FormFonts’ materials and textures library includes just under 5000 custom images not available anywhere else. And more are added every week. All materials are easily imported into SketchUp, as demonstrated.

Now you too can command the very latest materials pallet in SketchUp, and project Trend Textures™ like a master 3D modeler!

by Fred Abler

Thanks for reading, watching and subscribing – The FormFonts 3D Team

Sources:

• Create an Idea Book for your next Project – Houzz
• Fine Cabinetry and Design Solutions –  Venegas and Company
• Furniture as Art – Mizuki
• How2™ Importing & Projecting Textures in SketchUp – FormFonts YouTube Channel
• How2 ™ & Trend Textures™ & Trend Colors ™ are trademarks of FormFonts Inc.

I’ve always loved Alexander Calder. He was shabby, irascible, and brilliant in almost any media. The prolific American artist expressed himself effortlessly in sheet metal, wire, plywood, string, free-carving, and paint. And quite often, a combination of all of the above.

My favorite Calder works are his charming 3D wire sculptures. Calder first began showing his ‘Animal Circus’ (a menagerie of wire animals and caricature portraits) in Paris in 1927. It was the start of Calder’s lifelong interest in wire sculpture and kinetic art.

Fig 1. –  3D Wire Sketch, by Alexander Calder. Elephant (1928).

Now nearly a century later, you too can DIY some wireframe whimsy.. simply by exporting your drawing files from SketchUp into a new aluminum wire ‘3D printer’ from the New York design consultancy Pensa.

The DiWire ‘Bender’ is a makerbot that follows vector diagrams, to bend and shape pieces of wire into elaborate structures. It can easily handle 2D wire shapes, but somewhat amazingly, it also makes complex 3D wire “sketches” as well.

Take a look for yourself. Watch the DiWire bender in action on this video!

SketchUp Pro exports .obj files, which import into Pensa’s software for 3D bending. Or if you are interested in strictly 2D wireforms, you can use Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape (a free open source version of Illustrator).

I contacted Pensa Design’s Principal, Marco Perry. He confessed that Pensa has been somewhat overwhelmed by the tremendous interest in DIWire:

“People have told us about all sorts of uses they would have for one, from bending different kinds of metal to electro-luminescent wire and more. So we will open source it and put up plans and code on our blog soon – hope you make one for yourself!”

                                                                                     Marco Perry, Pensa Design

I was also curious about the choice of aluminum wire. Marco explained it’s not only malleable, but it has “almost zero spring back” making the alpha version easy to work with. Bending other materials is possible, he notes, but will need some additional calibration.

Marco said “perhaps in the future we will manufacture one..”  but for the moment Pensa is content to open source DiWire. For the latest DiWire updates, code, specs, bill of materials, etc., pick your favorite social media and stay in touch with creative minds at Pensa.

Blog - blog.pensanyc.com
RSS feed – http://blog.pensanyc.com/rss
Twitter – @thinkpensa   #diwire
Facebook - www.facebook.com/thinkpensa

Thanks for reading and subscribing!  The FormFonts 3D Models Team

Sources:

Pensa Design Consultancy
Alexander Calder Biography
SketchUp Pro
Inkscape

Something small is happening. A generation of young people have come down with ‘cabin fever’. The viral vector spreading this fever is a tumble-log called Cabin Porn. If you haven’t heard about it yet, well… you just did.

Cabin Porn is a visual atlas of cabin typology – dilapidated cabins from the last century, spanky new cabins, lake cabins, remote cabins, slab-cabins. Cabins, shacks and huts, small… and even smaller.

Fig 1. Image of a hiker’s hut near Arthur’s Pass, New Zealand.  Submitted by Greg Brown. Stress heads at work can now visit their ‘quiet place’ online at Cabin Porn.  DSFW – Definitely Safe for Work.

The Blogging-sphere has enjoyed round speculation as to why Cabin Fever is upon us. Everything from ‘urban hipster angst’, to ‘channeling your inner-Thoreau’, or simply the ‘need to find a quiet place’ have been proposed.

But in an age of high-tech and high anxiety, it’s unsurprising that cabins are revered for their perverse simplicity. And this renewed appreciation signals an important and improbable aesthetic shift –  a return to the poetics of space.

“…the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

                                                           Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

The Poetics of Space is a phenomenological exploration of how we experience intimate spaces. The French philosopher and author provides a dense, magical, and literary curation of the lived experiences of small spaces – the cellar, attics, cupboards…even the poetics of housekeeping.

Poetics’ is one of the few literary works that is required reading for architects. It provides a deep understanding of psychological sanctuary and recalls the spatial imagination of childhood.  Having read it, you will never look at ordinary spaces as.. ordinary again.

The need for psychological sanctuary is core to the growing Minimalist Movement – the desire to declutter, downsize, and de-stress our lives. For these new ascetics… small is beautiful, and small homes have become ‘the guardian of their identity” (De Botton).

Fig 2 and 3 – This Finish micro house ‘Nido’ (Nest in Italian) built by a designer in Finland for $10,000 and labor. 3D Model (above) and rendering (below) by Alan Fraser, FormFonts 3D Models.
Some Minimalists have even started living in their cabins. Finish Designer Robin Flack recently built a micro house that is only 96 square feet – small enough to be built without a building permit in Finland. With help from some local architects, this Robin.. built his own nest.

It’s Sunday!  Why not take your dog, a beat-up old thermos full of good coffee, a good book .. find yourself a quiet place, and re-create.

Perverse simplicity – the new aesthetic for New Ascetics.  Is it The Architecture of Happiness? You decide.

Thanks for reading and subscribing to FormFonts 3D Models!

Sources:

• Definitely Safe for Work (DSFW)  - Cabin Porn
• What it Means that Urban Hipsters like staring at pictures of Cabins – The Atlantic
• The Poetics of Space – Gaston Bachelard
• The Architecture of Happiness – Alain De Botton
• Influence, you already have it –  Becoming Minimalist
• Robin’s Micro House –  Tiny House Listings

One of the first things architecture students learn is that less than 3% of the built environment is designed by an architect. This vanishingly small fraction is meant to inflame young architects and fill them with purpose and passion.

There are only about 140,000 architects in the U.S.. Not nearly enough to go around. Consequently, most of the world forgoes ‘polite architecture’ designed by professional, and makes due with vernacular architecture – buildings designed and built by non-architects.

Frank Lloyd Wright described the vernacular as “Folk building growing in response to actual needs, fitted into environment by people who knew no better than to fit them with native feeling”. But this was no put down. He goes on: “for us, better worth study than all the highly self-conscious academic attempts at the beautiful throughout Europe”.

The wisdom of vernacular architecture obtains from the forced-compromise of locally available building materials and localized needs. Its naive beauty stems from pride-of-place, craft in construction, and the often charming applied decoration of these buildings.

Yet in this modern age of high-tech, you might think vernacular architecture is all but outmoded, a kind of quaint folk-art.  But then you’d be wrong. A new kind of Open Sourced meta-tek’ture is making for a vernacular comeback.

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The WikiHouse is an open source construction project that aims to make it possible for most anyone with modest skills, to freely download and build affordable housing. It was started by a group of young London designers, and on display last month at the Milan Design Week.

Fig 1.  Ready? Design, Print, Build! – The WikiHouse uses a construction system based on plywood FCOs (Flat Cut Outs) with fins that connect together like puzzle pieces, creating a sturdy structure.

WikiHouse builds on the ideas of the Open Sim Sim project, a response to the housing crisis in Japan after the Tsunami. By leveraging both technology and Open Source design, the projects enhance design-flow and collective memory – making architecture more accessible.

To start, would-be builders simply download a SketchUp plug-in that enables them to access the WikiHouse open source website. Thus users can browse a folksonomy of open designs, modify an existing plan, or even design anew – then download and ‘print’ using a CNC milling machine.

The plywood puzzle-pieces are then flat-packed for transport, and subsequently assembled in-situ, secured only with wingnuts and bolts, or mortise and tenon joints that are ‘persuaded’ into place by mallet. The mallet is of course itself a plywood FCO.

Fig 2. WikiHouse Construction Details.  The building system uses no glue, nails, or other permanent fasteners. This Finger-Tek™ makes construction more accessible to all.

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The WikiHouse is still only in the development phase, but the team is committed to building habitable houses during the next 12-months via collaborations in New Zealand, Japan, and the U.S.. Their target building-type is disaster-relief housing which may be a killer-app.

Yet I can’t help thinking this clever meta-tek deserves a wider audience. WikiHouse clearly addresses the extreme time, material, and construction constraints needed for disaster-relief. But why limit this DIY (Design-It-Yourself) construction only to catastrophes?

Open Source building could easily be applied to small structures – playhouses, utility sheds, dog houses, yoga platforms, writing studios, and all manner of out-shacks. For example, why not capitalize on the urban-farming craze with composting cribs or Chicken-Wiki!

Fig 3. – Chicken-Wiki. Open Source Chicken Coop for urban farming. 3D Model by Gabriel Concha and 2D photofigures by Alan Fraser. Download the SketchUp model at FormFonts 3D Models.

The Swedish flat-masters over at IKEA ought to promote this Finger-Tek™ construction system by partnering with WikiHouse so the idea can go viral. The name for this new flat-pack partnership would be of course … Wiki + IKEA =  WiKEA ™!

Fig 4. – WiKEA™ -  The new Design-It-Yourself  Flat Pack outbuildings and playstructures now available at IKEA. A serious proposal by FormFonts 3D Models. 3D Models developed in SketchUp. Image courtesy of WikiHouse.

The Swedes actually invented plywood. The self-taught Swedish inventor and building contractor Immanuel Nobel (father of Alfred his Nobel Prize) invented the rotary lathe in mid 1800’s. This enabled his follow-on invention… commercial grade plywood. Or was it vice-versa?

So then, it’s only proper that IKEA should host the world’s first collaboratory for plywood construction. And should you need some help tweaking the folksonomic designs, perhaps IKEA can hire some underemployed architects.. to help ‘pimp your plywood’!

The WiKEA™ .SKP file would then be emailed to your nearest CNC provider – a local lumberyard that will ‘cut’ your project for free. Yes, free! ‘Plywood-printing’ would be a huge sales-maker for manufacturers like Columbia Forest Products and Georgia Pacific.

In short:  The DIY (Design-It-Yourself) and Open Source movements are co-creating a new generation of vernacular architecture.

Thanks for reading and subscribing!   FormFonts 3D Team

WiKEA™ and Finger-Tek™ are trademarks of FormFonts Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Sources:

Vernacular Architecture – Wikipedia
WikiHouse Website    http://www.wikihouse.cc/library
WikiHouse SketchUp Plug-in – Download Here
Daniel Dendra on Architecture – TedX Berlin
Open Sim Sim Project for Japan – OpenSimSim
Inventor of Modern Plywood –  Immanuel Nobel
North America’s Largest Plywood maker – Columbia Forest Products

As a child I spent many happy hours lost inside the large photographs of LIFE magazine  and The National Geographic. Their saturated images helped me see the larger world, and understand our fragile relationship to it.

An early introduction to ‘recycling’ came from a NatGeo picture. Young men were walking down a paved highway in Africa – wearing sandals made from recycled car tires. I just couldn’t get over the symmetry. Their feet wore tire-treads, just like the cars and buses next to them.

These clever re-treads helped me see things differently. Things could be reused, and in fact had to be, in poorer countries. So I became keen on re-purposing garbage into useful things. It was 70’s, and I fondly remember buying a bottle glass cutter kit at our co-op.

The glass cutter came attached to a compass, so you could circumscribe empty wine or beer bottles and make drinking glasses from them. I was only 8, but chose to make a set of wine goblets from recycled wine bottles. (symmetry again).

Fig 1- Recycled wine glasses and goblets by designer Laurence Brabant.  If you love glass and clever reuse, you need to check out his studio website. His glasswork is equal part utility and fine art.

The trick to a clean cut is to score the bottle only once, and then thermally shock the glass alternately with boiling hot and cold water. This takes less than 30 seconds, and creates a remarkably clean cut that will save you hours of wet-sanding.

I’m still obsessed with reusing and reusable containers. As a side project, I have a small green packaging company called PennyRevolution that makes a self-counting, recycled, and reusable coin roller I designed. They’re made from curbside-recycled milk jugs.

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So when Lucy Walker’s documentary “Waste Land” arrived in 2010, it immediately went to the top of my view-que. It is a truly inspiring documentary about the ‘catadores’ (garbage pickers) at Brazil’s Jardim Gramacho landfill, claimed to be the largest dump in the world,

Catadores are mostly illegal workers, and very poor. The film documents how some of their lives are forever changed when they are chosen to collaborate with Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist now living in Brooklyn.

Mr. Muniz transforms the catadores, making them both his artistic assistants and collaborators in an art project called “There is No Garbage”. Muniz takes classical photographs of the catadores, which are “sketches” for huge mosaics made of trash.

The documentary deftly deconstructs the notion of “garbage” by skilled camerawork. It subjectively changes the viewer’s visual and semantic distance from the garbage – repeatedly throughout the film. This helps us see that “trash” is merely a single viewpoint.

When the film opens, an extreme far-shot shows Jardim Gramacho as some kind of abstract resource, a moving mountain of jello covered by thousands of ants. The ‘ants’ in fact are the 3000 catadores that recover more than 200 tons of recyclable material each day.

Fig 2 – Satellite Photo (from 600 miles up) of Jardim Gramacho, outside Rio De Janiero, Brazil. Gramacho received 70% of Rio’s daily output of trash. It claims to be the world’s largest landfill. As do landfills in Mexico and Korea. Why anyone wants this distinction is unknown.

As the film’s semantic focus begins to rack, in (to extreme closeups) and back out again, it provides an expressive point-alism both the filmmaker and artist intend. Namely that there is No Garbage, only disuse. And there is No Away, in throw away.

For example, when sorted by Tião and his band of pickers into neat piles, “garbage” becomes commercially valuable technical nutrients that can be resold and re-purposed – making each catadore some $20 to $30 a day.

And when ‘trash’ is further curated by the catadores, and collaboratively composed by visual artist Vik Muniz – it is optically-fused into fine art, which is then photographed and sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

Fig 3. – Photograph of art in progress (3 stories up). Using a laser-pointer, Brazilian born Vik Muniz directs his catadore-assistants in Waste Land, creating artworks from landfill trash. The project raise more than $300,000 for the catadores. Image from the documentary “Waste Land”.

The documentary is also an essay on social entrepreneurship. It does not solicit pity or empathy, but asks only that we look at things differently…with dignity. “We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials,” say Tião repeatedly throughout the film.

The difference between these two viewpoints (garbage vs. recyclables) is a matter of commercial value, and intense pride for the catadores.

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This past week, the Jardim Gramacho landfill came to a permanent end. It was closed down in time for Rio to host the Rio+20 UN environmental conference. For decades the landfill has been leaking toxic liquid waste into the beautiful Guanabara Bay it overlooks.

The Gramacho landfill will now be reused itself, as a public park – though the site’s administrators say it will take more than 15 years for the land to fully recover. And the more than 3000 catadores… What will happen to them?

 Brazil is currently doing GIS research that it hopes will turn its legions of informal ‘pickers of recyclable materials’ into an opportunistic urban army of independent recycle-techs that require no central coordination.

Researchers at São Paulo University in Brazil have teamed up with MIT to optimize recycling routes using available tech. The project is called Forage Tracking, and it integrates standard technology (sensors, GPS, GIS, etc.) to solve social challenges.

Fig 4. – The Forage Tracking project is mapping the tacit knowledge and spatial organization of informal recyclers.  This way catadores can maximize collection of reusable materials without central coordination. Courtesy of MIT’s Sensable City lab.

“The idea is to help the informal recycler cooperatives with cheap technologies to document their knowledge and improve their operations.” says Dietmar Offenhuber, a researcher at the MIT’s SENSEable City Lab.

In Short – Public-private partnerships and GIS/GPS technologies may make distributed recovery of recyclables more participatory and effective, for the developing world.

Thanks for reading and subscribing!    FormFonts 3D Models

Sources:

• WasteLand (2010 Critics Pick) – The New York Times
• An Incredible Satellite Tour Of 15 Trash Dumps.. – Business Insider
• The End of Jardim Gramacho Landfill: Daily  - The Rio Times
• Laurence Brabant Studio
• Penny Revolution - makers of self-counting and reusable coin wrappers.

The progressive state of Nevada just issued Google’s driverless vehicles its first “drivers” licence. That’s right, a machine got a learner’s permit. Google’s autonomous cars can now drive themselves on any Nevada  roadway – as long as two meat-popsicles chaperone.

The average American now spends more than their 2 week vacation, commuting to work – 100 hours annually according to the 2005 U.S. Census. En mass transit, that’s hundreds of millions of hours behind the wheel. A valuable media market called ‘Drive Time’.

Google wants to help this car-captive audience use their Drive Time more productively. You know… searching Google, socializing on Google Hangouts, texting, chatting, and clicking on Google Adwords.

The Google is also terrified distracted driver laws will soon make smart phones illegal in cars. So no surprise, The Google is hard at work on driverless cars.

Fig.1   3D Model of Lexus 2054 – by FormFonts 3D.  This beautiful vision for future commuters was designed for The Minority Report. Designer’s working with Lexus came up with a form factor would run on fuel cells, and have many advanced safety features, including a crash-proof structure. In Google’s version, it’s a mobile media-pod and the  windshields double as transparent touch-screens.

The Internet reduces the friction of distance, enabling millions to telecommute. It’s strange then that Google is pursuing a shrinking media market. Unless of course, you think about mass transportation as just another kind of web-service.

And really, that’s how The Google sees everything. They’d like to lease you transportation monthly just like data storage. Of course, this robo-car (hacker slang) will really be just be an electric browser-mobile, with all the Chrome… inside.

This robo-rental will be wirelessly tethered, and your every stop planned, recorded, and/or shared by Google. In transit, it will also laser-scan your route, record wifi hotspots, and pair telematically with nearby vehicles. Lease Payment? Perhaps as low as $100 a month.

About the only thing this electric browsermobile won’t do, is make coffee. But the average worker spends $1100 a year on coffee. No way Google leaves that money on the table. Starbucks will partner with Google and plug-in to the browsermobile… for on-board brew.

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From the age of six, I couldn’t wait to drive my own car. So I’ll likely never own a browsermobile. But I do love the idea for distracted drivers –  all those other people I see chatting, texting, shaving and putting on eyeliner at 70+ mph on their way to work.

And if you think you’re one of those exceptional people who can actually multi-task on the move (who doesn’t)… or that you’re an immortal teenager, you really need to watch this!

Fig. 2 –  Video of Belgian Drivers License Test. Drivers are Required to Text and Drive safely, in order to get their driver’s licence. It flips the script, and is definitely worth watching.

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Another reason to like robo-cars is the sophisticated Smart Geometry they will require. You can only imagine the complex hyperdimensional Mirror Worlds needed to manage the nation’s road-traffic on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis.

Fig. 3  –  An image of what Google’s driverless car sees. A lot of Smart Geometry is needed for Telematics like this.  Notice how on board laser-scanners capture partial profiles of nearby vehicles, does type ID by pattern matching, and then puts a bounding box around each vehicle. Image from Nevada DOT.

Barring any breakthroughs (i.e, reductions in battery costs or increases in their energy density), Google’s browsermobiles are also probably our best chance to make electric vehicles accessible to millions. I’ve already reserved my vanity license plate… C U OPEC !

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Still, there are some roadblocks. The uber geniuses at The Google haven’t thought of everything. Autonomobiles will almost never speed, road-rage, frogger (change lanes rapidly to get ahead of traffic), jump a red, or ‘catch a prune’ (french slang for getting a parking ticket).

[ Note: The Nevada tester already "gets honked at more often because it's being safe!" according to Nevada DMV Director, Bruce Breslow ]

That means Billions of dollars in lost state and local revenues that can’t otherwise be replaced. And who’s going to re-employ all those Highway Patrol officers, or DMV Workers once you can renew your driver’s license while “driving”. Google? Not likely.

In Short:  Google wants to make commuters… commputers!  Affordable electric vehicles may be a processional benefit.  But Edward Tenner’s Law of Unintended Consequences still applies.

Thanks for reading and subscribing!  - FormFonts 3D Models

Sources:

• Google’s self-driving car tests get Nevada OK – CBC News
• Americans now Spend 100 Hours a Year Commuting –  About.com
• Average American Worker Spends Nearly $1,100/year on Coffee – The Consumerist
• Edward Tenner : Unintended Consequences  - TED Talks Video

The Egyptians were some pretty interesting people. The blue water-lilly of the Nile (blue lotus) can be used to induce sleep, and its psychoactive properties are also well known.

The blue lotus appears throughout Egyptian iconography, suggesting a religious use. Therefore, It seems likely Egyptian lotus-eaters had strong virtual experiences of ‘death’ which explains their obsession with death and funerary practices.

Obsessed by the afterlife, the bridge between this life and the next for Egyptians was architecture itself.  And canonical architectural history theory is that primitive benches (called mastabahs) were eventually stacked to from Ziggurats, or stepped pyramids.

Eventually, these stepped ‘stairways to heaven’ then became smoothly inclined pyramids crowned by gold or copper-covered capstones – that likely shone in the sun for miles during the day, and perhaps…  electro-magically,  even radiated an ethereal glow at night.

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The Great Pyramid of Giza is flat topped. It’s capstone has been missing since the time of Christ. The capstone is a solid mini-pyramid 30’ on each side, and could hardly have gone missing. The riddle of the flat-topped pyramid, has vexed Egyptologists for centuries.

Sir W. Siemens, a serious British inventor, climbed to the top of the pyramid with his Arab guides, determined to solve the riddle. But at the flat top,  things truly got shocking. One of his guides called out to his attention that when he held his fingers out, he would hear a very loud ringing.

Seimens verified this by raising his own finger and felt a prickling sensation, and also received a shock when he tried to drink from a wine bottle. Seimens then wrapped a full wine bottle in a newspaper (to create an early form of capacitor) and then held it aloft where it was charged with electricity.

Sparks spit from the bottle, and Seimen’s Arab guides were terrified, thinking he was some kind of Harry Bottler, and grabbed his companion. It was a bad move. Seimens pointed the jar-electric at the fellow.. and transmitted a shock so strong, that it knocked him to the ground.

Since this shocking discovery, many theories abound as to true purpose of these largely “functional” buildings. They range from the merely possible (The pyramids were power antennae analogous to Tesla’s WydenCliff tower) to the wildly improbable – Pyramids are some kind of ‘Fifth Element’ gateway for ancient aliens.

—–

You could waste many happy hours on the interwebs trying to solve the Great Pyramid at Giza’s Capstone Controversy, or some might even say ‘Consipracy’. Or you could do something.. a bit more interesting.

The Giza Archives debuted early this morning, and now you can experience the pyramids and plateau of ancient Giza in first-person-immersive. No blue-lotus,  passport , or primative leyden jars required!

The Giza Archives is a clever joint project of Dassault Systemes and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). This “strategic partnership” enables the real-time virtual reconstruction of the Giza plateau based on the MFA’s comprehensive historic archives.

Apparently the Museum’s photographic archives were getting a bit dusty and hard-to-love, so it made sense to bring them back from the dead, with interactive 3D. Seems even Museums need to remain relevant. So we go from Old archives, to real-time 3D.

Fig 1.  Dassault Systems and Boston MFA experiment in a brave new world of ‘Experiental Marketing’ of history. A 2D video of the web-based 3D Immersive experience of the Giza plateau, circa 3000 B.C. that debuted this morning on the web.

To be one of the first virtual archeologists and 3D’Egyptologists on site this morning, click on the temporal spin-field here… Warning, FireFox Browser running in 32 bit mode is required!

In Short – Everything really old, is new again – thanks to 3D experiential marketing!

Thanks for reading and subscribing – FormFonts 3D

Sources:

• Sir W. Seimans, British Inventor  - Wikipedia
• Egypt the Cradle of Ancient Masonry – Norman Frederick De Clifford
• CapStone Controvery – Robert Beauval

My last post Raster Revolution, was an aggressive prediction that 3D raster (or Voxel) data will soon overthrow polygons as the privileged paradigm in 3D. Making bold predictions is risky anytime and anywhere. But especially so on the interwebs – where nothing ever dies.

I was starting to question my own conviction, until I came across Sam Pfeifle’s blog ‘Head in the Point Clouds’. Sam is the editor at Spar Point Group, and his semi-sarcastic post  ‘Good To See Laser Scanning Put to Important Work’ stepped on my… point, about the Raster Revolution.

Pfeifle’s post was about the new “Little Richards” custom ice cubes, made in the shape of Virgin Airlines owner Sir Richard Branson’s head. These icy avatars of Sir’ Shaggy himself, were made using 3D laser Scanners.

Fig. 1. Virgin Airline’s unstoppable Promoter-in-Chief, Sir Richard Branson’s   latest PR stunt. Ice cubes in the shape of his own head!

Pfiefle’s reasuring point was this – “… it’s a good sign for the rate of 3D data capture adoption when the technology starts to be put to more, shall we say, frivolous pursuits”.     

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Sir Richard has been busy restoring air travel to its former glamor during the Swinging 60’s, replete with on-board mood lighting, retro sensibilities, personal TV remotes, and now… Mad Men cocktails, brought to you by one of Virgin’s lovely ‘red-hot’ hostesses.

These crimson-lipped beauties wear smart-skirts, Updos, and ‘Upper Class Red’ lipstick with matching platform pumps that get their own close-ups in Virgin’s cheeky videos (below). Virgin  proudly boasts “The hottest flight-attendants in the Sky”.

Fig 2.  ‘Your airline’s either got it or it hasn’t’.  Official Virgin Atlantic advert from 2011.  An obvious homage to the sexy opening sequences of James Bond movies.

As an architect I appreciate Virgin’s optics, and the return of some kind of excitement to air travel. But Branson has pretty much mined this meme. What could be next? Austin Powers Approved rotating round beds in upper class… Mile-high key parties?

We’ll find out when Virgin Atlantic releases details of their new “Whispering Coach” for Upper Class in a few weeks. At least now when you fly the shagadelic skies, you won’t have to drink alone!  Sir Richard’s icy avatars will personally keep you company.

In Short:  The Raster Revolution is here.. all thanks to 3D laser scanning technology.

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Richard Branson ice cubes Chill Virgin Atlantic.      ABC News
‘Good To See Laser Scanning Put to Important Work’ – SPAR Point Group
Virgin Cabin Crew Taught to Whisper –  The Telegraph

When I was a young architecture student studying in Denmark, I attended a brilliant dinner at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It was an invitation only affair, and much of the Royal Academy and DIS architecture faculty attended.

I had likely been invited because (in a design charrette) I chose the Scandic Palace Hotel on Rådhuspladsen as my favorite local building – a masterful mashup of Baltic Romanticism + Art Nouveau. Only later did I learn Professor Anton Rosen, a former Academy member, had designed it.

After dinner that magic moment arrived. Everyone was having their coffee and weighing up the evening: Should I run for an early train home, or, Stay and talk-and-drink awhile? Several attempts at after-dinner conversation were made, but none took.

Prof. Jørn Peder Hansen and I were at a particularly good table – we were cozily ensconced among the loveliest female danish architecture students – ever! No way was I ready for the evening to end.

I knew those assembled may be interested in what this young Amerikanere’ would say about architecture. But I also knew that if I wanted the evening to last -  I had only one shot, and it had better be pitch-perfect!

Drawing on the beautiful golden-courage that is Danish beer, I asked those assembled…

  “So what about Jørn Utzon, then. Why don’t we hear any more about him?”

The room filled with appreciative Danish snorts-n-sighs. Danes will suck in air audibly when something strikes them the right way. I had side-stepped the obvious-and-annoying question about Danish Star’chitects – Henning Larsen, Tegnestuen Vandkunsten, or A5, etc.,

Rather, I had shown a real and deeper appreciation of Danish Architecture.  And, Yes! I believe this would now be worthy of further comment, discussion, and story-telling ..

We continued for many happy hours of drinking, talking and flirting. I actually felt…. Danish. And deep-lore was revealed. Utzon was a very interesting fellow. But the evening ended with the best story of all – as told byJørn Peder Hensen, himself.

 The context was Utzon’s brilliant housing project – KingoHusene, in Helsingor, Denmark.

Fig 1.  Kingo Houses – a housing development designed by architect Jørn Utzon.

I always assumed that the sinuous layout of the Kingo houses was a creative use of french-curves, or a sympathy towards topography of the site, and that these lovely brick residences were uniquely Danish.

But Peder-Hansen explained that Utzon drew upon Chinese and Islamic influences for the buildings. And the string-of-pearls layout? It obtained from Utzon’s experience as a young architect in North Africa – where masons used a knotted-rope to measure and layout their buildings.

This knotted rope fascinated Utzon, for all that it implied, and he exploited this flexibility fully in Kingo Husene. And so, Prof. Hansen concluded our evening splendidly with..

“The Tools we use to measure..  Matter !!”.   It couldn’t get any better than this.

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The way we measure does matter. A lot! And like it or not, the tools and software we use are as confining as they are liberating. As the Utzon parable illustrates, when the way we measure things changes, our designs can change radically, and very suddenly.

One only has to look at the GooGy shapes and architecture of Frank Gehry to realize this is true. None of his sculptural form-giving would have been possible without parametric CAD. Even if he had to use software for aircraft design (Catia) to begin with.

I’ve been telling people that we are on the cusp of The Raster Revolution(TM). An explosion of 3D raster-data driven by digital metrology, that will likely result in the displacement of dead parrots (i.e., polygons) as the privileged paradigm for 3D.

(A voxel represents a single sample, or data point, on a regularly-spaced, three dimensional grid). In short a Voxel is a 3D pixel or raster – hence the Raster Revolution.)

3D Laser Scanning (LIDAR) has accelerated the Raster Revolution by measuring nearly everything digitally – from the earth’s 3D surface from the Space Shuttle, to Google StreetViews, to building interiors (see Marc’s Post – Hey Algorithm, It’s a flat plane), and even 3D objects.

It now seems almost obvious that laser-scanners, digital point clouds, and voxel data will fundamentally change 3D modeling forever. I’ve been saying so for almost a decade now, and I’ve told those that would listen, that what we really need is a… SketchUp-for-Voxels!

So you can imagine my delight when Alan Fraser sent this interview with Bryn Fosburgh, VP at Trimble this morning, and I read the following…

“Currently, Pointools has a plug-in for SketchUp that allows for the use of point cloud data, and Fosburgh said SketchUp’s API would allow for Trimble and other third-party developers to fairly easily expand the program’s ability to utilize as-built 3D data.”                source:   Spar Point Group

——-

Not only does this confirm some of my aggressive ‘connect-the-dots’ predictions for SketchUp 3.0 , it cinches my conviction that we are truly entering a new period of revolutionary change in 3D modeling.

These changes involve nothing less that a whole new way of representing reality,  something metaphorically like the invention of Pointillism in the late 1800s.

Fig. 2   George Seurat  (1884-1886). Seurat invented Pointillism. This time consuming ‘point’ style experimented with the perceptual phenomenon called optical blending.  I believe Seurat was imitating the granular capture of light, typical of early photographs. Photography was invented about 50 years prior by fellow frenchman, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.

Within a few short years, we may look back at polygons affectionately – as an historic means of representation of reality – perhaps they way we now regard a Cubist painting, or the charm of old mechanical drafting tables. It’s a bold prediction, but consider this:

Now that 3D laser-scaning is widely available, highly accurate, easy to use, and increasingly inexpensive.. it solves a fundamental problem of 3D world-making, something we content-types refer to as – the first cost of content creation.

——-

In Short –  3D laser-scanning is reducing the first-cost of content creation for significant amounts of in-situ content. We will soon be able to Rip’ Reality, as easily as we do an MP3.

The Raster Revolution is already here, and the future is about to become widely distributed… in SketchUp!

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