This placement will prepare models for interactive use in the university’s immersive displays. It will use and develop building information modelling and software skills.
Department: Technical Group (Construction Management & Engineering)
Supervised by: Prof Jennifer Whyte
The aim of this placement is to develop new workflows for interactive real-time 3D display of information-rich models of the built environment. The construction sector is changing as Building Information Modelling (BIM) is mandated for use in all UK public procurement by 2016. Data is combined from laser scans, design models, and simulation in new, and often distributed ways, to understand performance through the life-cycle. Workflows for translating data into packages for interactive real-time 3D display are important as construction clients and project teams need new ways to visualize and interact with their data. The student will translate models from the desk-top computer aided design (CAD) package, Revit, into formats that can be viewed on the University’s Powerwall and/or in the CAVE facility. While this is a stand-alone project, it is part of a larger initiative to repurpose the University's immersive display facilities for the visualization of built infrastructure. The work of the placement student will be to visualize models and to test, develop and document standard workflows for this. They will have the opportunity to work with more experienced researchers and will have access to appropriate software. The project will build on work that has been done in Reading and elsewhere to establish workflows from Revit to the software package Unity. The research team at the University of Reading collaborates with London station and underground project teams, who have already come to view their models in the CAVE facility and will be interested in this work.
The student will be gain experience using software in the School of Construction Management and Engineering's new Building Information Modelling (BIM) Lounge, and will interact with members of the Design Innovation Research Centre (www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation), which is looking at new modes of design in the digital economy. They will gain experience in using open standards such as industry foundation classes (IFCs) as part of a workflow.
Essential skills are: • a good level of computer literacy; • ability to rapidly learn to operate Revit and Windows based VR packages; and • ability to learn a scripting language; and • experience working in a team. Desirable skills, which are not essential, are computing and software skills, and previous experience using CAD and Windows and/or Linux-based VR packages.
The placement offers a high-impact learning opportunity, development skills and awareness, range of steps of the research process. The student will learn about: • Experimental design, through refining a protocol to record the results, selecting models to use and discussing with other researchers the validation of these results. • Data collection and analysis, through running models through workflows and systematically recording the steps taken and outputs of these workflows. • Presentation and feedback of research, through an interim and final presentation of the research to academics in the School of Construction Management and Engineering and the School of Systems Engineering. • Collaborative research, the student will be part of a research community as a member of the team within the Design Innovation Research Centre, they will have day-to-day interactions with a range of researchers and attend team meetings and activities. • Industry interaction, it is expected that there will be an opportunity to discuss the research with one or more of the Centre’s industrial partners.
The main place of work will be with the immersive displays in the Visualization and Interactive Technologies Centre, and a desk will be allocated here.
9-5 Monday-Friday
Sunday 01 July 2012 - Thursday 16 August 2012
A CV and covering letter should be sent to designinnovation@reading.ac.uk by Friday 15th March with interviews taking place in the last week of the spring term, week starting 18th March; or the first week of the summer term. The covering letter should indicate availability in those weeks. The interview will probe your interest, self-motivation and existing knowledge. The placement will start the week after the summer term, on Monday 1st July.