A5 Requirements Clarification

For Assignment #5 we're modifying the requirements as follows from what the assignment on VistaBB says.  The posted requirements are:

“You should address at least three primary systems and two secondary systems attempting to find as great a variety as possible. One of each of these will be a "major" system in common use in commercial buildings. The others shall be unusual systems, at one of which promotes economical energy use. “

the new requirements are reduced.  Each team will analyze:

• One “major” system – e.g. CAV
• One “minor” or unusual system – e.g. wind scoop

Assignment Posting Requirements

Recently we’ve had several teams who have not posted the URL to both the Submit DB and to the VistaBB.  Also we’ve had students who turned in their teamwork assessments late.  We’ve been lenient with them

Henceforth we’re going to be rigid about those requirements.  Each member of the team should check that the assignments are submitted correctly to avoid all suffering.

A3–General Comments from the Grader

Hi everyone, everyone in my section did well receiving a B or higher. It is clear that you are all beginning to understand the delivery process of this course and engineering communication as a whole. It should be noted though that many of the groups were deducted points for misspelling words and unclear writing. Though this is a small portion of points in these assignment, it is one of the most important things to make sure you are doing correctly in your professional work, simply because no one is going to listen to you if you cannot even spell correctly.

The information provided regarding structural systems was well done and very relevant to the goals of this class. Do not forget to argue the negative though to be complete in your discussions. Why is a system appropriate and why is a system also inappropriate? Both factors are important to consider when making engineering decisions.

Anyway, good job again everyone!

A2–Student Comments & Suggestions

Below are student comments and suggestions.   I’ve added a response below each one. 

Jim Mitchell

“.. .Although this should be the student’s responsibility, a possible way to ensure that students fully understanding each topic would be to ask one student to do the calculations, then have another student write an explanation of how the calculations were performed. This would force the students to interact and discuss the process, but may not be necessary for those students who are self-motivated and eager to take part in learning about each system for their assigned building.

JEM – Nice suggestion.  I hope you follow it in future.

It may also be beneficial for the students to present the system that they did not do the research/calculations for. This would force them to get a full understanding of how the system is reflected in their building, rather than just focusing on one individual system. By combining the understanding of the Architectural, Structural and HVAC systems an understanding of the entire building, inside and out, is developed. The students are then able to see how the design of the structure affects the design of the mechanical systems, or vice versa. Knowing how these systems interact and how they influence the overall design is an important concept that is integral to move forward as an architectural engineer.”

JEM – again a nice suggestion, well worth following.

“This assignment could be improved with more help on choosing a building. As students we are still learning about buildings and I feel that a very difficult part of this assignment, for our group, was choosing a building. With more guidelines on how to choose a building and what to look for in a building that is manageable, the building selection process would have gone a lot smoother.”

JEM – I’d argue that almost any building would suffice.  There isn’t a perfect one.  Making quick decisions is a useful skill as well.

“This assignment was a large workload in a very small time frame. The temptation is to suggest eliminating some of the assignments or giving the students more time. While I would appreciate both of those, I realize that this workload prepares us for not only senior design, but also the real world. Some elements of this assignment that seem unnecessary are the amount of focus placed on the architectural system. Perhaps I am just biased as an engineer, but the architectural calculations seem to serve little purpose, and I think the analysis section would be adequate. I also don't think it should be necessary to include the Sketch-up file unless the student decided to alter the model for extra credit. It is just the model pulled off of Google's 3D warehouse.”

JEM – This is a reasonable critique.  My response is that understanding the architecture of the building and the architect’s goals is important to the engineering, and not something usually taught in engineering classes

“Some suggestions for this project in the future are that the students should make sure to choose a structure that is reasonable to perform load calculations on.  They should understand that even though most of this project is speculative, choosing a building that can provide you with at least some information is a better idea.  There was some information on our building but none of it was able to help us with the load calculations so all of our calculations are mostly approximations.  Choosing a smaller yet innovative building is probably the best way to go so it isn't too overwhelming.”

JEM – This is reasonable as well.  My thought on not limiting your choices to fairly small buildings (as we do for the rest of the assignments in this course), is that it’s OK to approximate for really big and unusual buildings, and that they can/should be inspiring to an engineer.

* Our group found Architectural Record to be very helpful in our search for information and especially detailed drawings.  - JEM – Good

* While the project calculations are fairly straightforward, any small mistake can add a large degree of error to an already rough-estimate. Especially in the Fall Semester, a short review/overview session of the HVAC and structural calculations necessary may be helpful to student who have not taken or may have forgotten information from pre-requisite courses This seems as if it is asking for the cooling load during the winter: "length of the cooling season" could be changed to "length of the heating season," to clarify its meaning.

JEM – These are good suggestions too.  For the instructors it’s always a balance of time.  We will be providing those reviews as we get to the systems on the other assignments.

Also, your clarification suggestion is worthwhile.

A2- Grader’s Comments

Grader 1

Hi all, congratulations on another good assignment. The class as a whole performed very well.

A few things to note,

• when providing calculations, keep in mind the goal of this is to be able to present them in such a way that your audience can easily interpret and understand your assumptions, process, and results. Many of the groups did this well, keep doing what you're doing.
• The organization of the websites have improved a lot since the beginning of this class. They are much easier to navigate through and understand. When organizing drawings, however, some groups did not clearly title what was being shown. For example, calling a drawing "North Section" or "Ground Floor Plan" as oppose to "Section" or "Floor Plan" tells a lot more about what is being shown.

These are all just little things that will make your work better though, as I said before, the work as a whole is excellent. Keep up the good work everyone!

Grader 2

I'm sure by now you are becoming much more proficient with Google Sites.  The organization of the websites and use of features demonstrated this.  I was very impressed by the variety of buildings students selected.  Many of the choices were original and visually interesting buildings.

• Students should remember that teamwork evaluations must be submitted within one day after the assignment due date.  The teamwork evaluations cannot be submitted for re-grading.  Many students included the tasks assigned to each group member, but failed to evaluate their performance.  This is a critical part of the evaluation.
• Several groups failed to attach a SketchUp file of the building model, yet included screenshots of the model in the website.  Please follow the rubric carefully.
• Students should also remember to proofread their work.  Several assignments were filled with typos.  Having the assignment look like this really discredits any point you are trying to make. 
• From now on, most of the assignments will include the presentation of calculations and data.  Remember that this data should be reported in a neat format that is easy to follow.  A great way to do this is by creating tables.  A few of the groups created tables of calculations in Excel and took a screenshot of them.  This seemed to work well.
• Please remember that you have one week to resubmit the assignment for re-grading.  (due Oct 18).  Once again, great work!
  

A1a–Revit - Grader’s Comments

Grader #1

Once again, everyone did really well for the most part. It is critical however, to read all of the instructions carefully, the rubric AND the directions. The instructions ask for very certain specifics of how to present your work. In my experience, when sending plans out it was necessary to ensure that the plans were scaled correctly and printed to PDF on the correct size paper, typically 30" x 42". We would never send a Revit model and expect the receiver to decipher through them because this could create unnecessary ambiguities. The great thing about this class is that it prepares us for real world aspects of engineering jobs besides analyzing a truss or calculating HVAC loads. It also teaches us how to deliver our work.

Grader #2

From the majority of the student feedback, it seemed as if students enjoyed this assignment and found the Revit tutorial to be very helpful. For most students, this was the first time they used Revit and they seem eager to learn more about it.

The grading of this assignment was a little different than A1. A grading form in BBVista was used, indicating the performance for each criteria.

Several students did not submit the Revit model to BBVista. This is explicitly stated in the projects deliverables. No points were awarded if the model was not submitted. A surprising number of students forgot to dimension a continuous wall that is 10x the number of letters in their last name on their .pdf drawing sheet. This was listed in the Assignment details, which are very important to read.

Part of the “Sheet Exists” criteria was that students submit a 30”x42” drawing sheet. The majority of students turned in an 8.5”x11” pdf. Because the Revit sheet was created at 30”x42” and printed at 8.5”x11”, the drawings were not to scale. Although no points were deducted for submitting an 8.5”x11” sheet, please be mindful that by reducing to this page size the aspect ratio of the drawing changed.