Sunday, March 8, 2020

Reflection


This class opened my eyes to a different world and a lot of technology that I didn’t know existed. I did not know about some of the technology that was presented and some of it is very applicable right now in both co-op and career search. This class has made me think about how I should look at a company and whether they are valuing technology. I didn’t know anything about databases, which was very helpful to think about. BIM was much more applicable for me as a structural engineer, but the holistic approach of using BIM as a full package including all the project data. The topics related to robots and AI were also very intriguing, especially the use of AI to look at sites and using robots to construct buildings. Learning how to create a family in Revit is a very practical and useful tool, especially understanding the idea of constraints and using the dimension tool to get equal distances. This can be very applicable to a job in structural engineering.
I think this knowledge can be applied to structural engineering and a future job by understanding I constantly have to be learning, because nobody knows how the industry will change and the effect it will have on the people working in it. I think having an eye towards the future is the best way to do your job effectively as well as keeping your company relevant and profitable. Technology can only help improve us as engineers and make our job more efficient and things like BIM, AI, robots and databases can be part of making that happen.
Overall, this class covered a lot of material and had a large amount of knowledge available, which will be useful to know when my time at Drexel is complete. The whole class gave me a new perspective and I am glad I took the class.

Abdul,
This class was great at covering a wide range of material and much like you I faced challenges associated with using databases for the first time and I am glad I took the class.
Pritesh,
I agree that revit is much more complicated than autocad, but can be much more useful. It is an important skill to have as a structural engineer, I used it every day over co-op and it doesn't take that long to learn.

Dane,
I thought very similar thoughts as I was taking this class because the first co-op I worked for had extremely outdated processes and software. It caused the company to go downhill fast and taking this class allowed me to keep the future in mind.

3 comments:

Manon Flamini said...

Andrew,

I completely agree that one of the most important things this class taught me was that we have to be constantly learning. Everyday there are new technologies and softwares being introduced and it is really important for us to understand this and how they can help us in our careers.

Jake Hall said...

I think your point is interesting about how the industry is always changing because it definitely is but we also talked about what is slowing the industry from evolving. Since many niches of the industry are opposed to change the full potential of designs arent always being reached. I think it is important to be on the right side of that push for change.

Madeleine Walker-Elders said...

Andrew,

I agree that the industry is going to be rapidly changing during our careers, and the best thing we can do to prepare for this is to be adaptable to the new technologies we encounter. What continues to be important is that we push for change in the AEC world so that it continues to evolve as other tech industries flourish and speed ahead, it is important that we keep up.