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If you came here from the link on Ralph Grabowski’s upFront.eZine, welcome. I’ve updated this
document and copied it to my blog here:
https://tangerinefocus.com/2022/06/08/the-form-of-
engagement/
I am honored to speak at the
BIM Coordinators Summit 2022
in September in Dublin. This post
describes my talk:
The Form of Engagement with digital models
.
Summary:
About the form of engagement with models.
TGN
is a proposed form of engagement with digital models (of all kinds). It’s motivated by:
•
the imperative of visual interpretive technique
for making sense of models, a human
demand for clear intelligibility, through
a coherent and recognizable form of engagement
with very complex digital environments
, and
•
the clear and present (and patently obvious!) path forward to the generation 2 fusion of
articulate focus within digital worlds
, leapfrogging the now 10 years old
1st gen drawing-
model fusion automation that I invented
.
TGN is intended as an open standard and common format of engagement with models, for
development within YOUR favorite modeling apps and platforms.
TGN is a triple fusion of:
•
modeled environments (of any kind)
•
technical “drawing” (attention-focusing rigs)
•
techniques of camera control from the history of fi lm (who’s better at techniques of looking
atthings?)
Regarding the latter (camera control), some intriguing examples are here on YouTube:
https://
youtu.be/yLHNBssyuE4
The narrator mentions at the end,
“camera moves in fi lm,
combining informational control and emotional positioning; movement becomes the director’s
editorial voice.”
Well, this is applicable in technical domains like engineering, architecture, and construction, far
more than you may at fi rst imagine.
TGN will make digital worlds more effective, useful, and engaging for architects, engineers,
builders, and facility occupants and operators.
At a minimum, TGN is aimed at making (all) models more engaging, more intelligible, more
clarifying, and therefore easier to use and more useful to use, less tedious to use and more fun
to use. More interesting AND more practical. More informative. Let’s put it this way: more a
place where thinking happens and understanding grows.
This will attract more people, to do more things, with more models.
And guess what?
That’s gonna make models better.
To be clear, you develop TGN functions in your favorite software platform.
TGN is NOT, yet another, software product.
It just makes the software you love, better.
Let’s do it!
Evolution in the Form of Engagement.
TGN is a proposed industry standard, and open, form and format of engagement with digital
spatial environments of all kinds, with a community-managed TGN standard core feature set
(to enable cross-app/platform TGN rig portability with acceptable graphical fi delity after the
share)
plus a practically unlimited feature ceiling above the standard core for domain and app-
unique graphical expression that can be developed by anyone using the TGN API while still
having the reliable TGN standard core.
Download a software developer specifi cation for TGN at my website:
https://
tangerinefocus.com
There, also fi nd TGN demo and discussion videos.
I’ll show in Dublin in September: an improved TGN demo, the TGN feature set, ideas on how
TGN development can be phased, a distinction between standardized core features (for TGN
portability from one app to another), and the unlimited potential for tuning and additional
features for anyone who wants to carry it further and do unique things in their TGN
implementation in their target app.
There should be (many) dozens of different implementations of TGN catering to many
specializations, in many apps and platforms, but all with a common minimum TGN standard
core, for the primary must-have critical base features that make up the basic visual Form of
Engagement with digital models, of all kinds.
Once it starts it won’t stop…
Engagement has Form
Think of engagement,
and forms of engagement.
In the engagement of sky and ground, the engagement is formed through trees and
grasslands. How about people engaged with other people? Engagement can be through
boxing, or debate, or many other forms. At a larger scale, where populations engage with
nature, these engage through urban form, the form of the city.
Now picture this: a person engaged with a piece of luggage. They engage by way of a handle.
Hauling a piece of luggage onto a train without a handle is an awkward form of engagement.
So much so that soon enough we’ll fi nd ourselves discarding contents, or abandoning the
luggage altogether. The point is that without an effective form of engagement, engagement
fails. No engagement is formed.
The
form
of engagement with digital models
Do we wander around in modeled environments noticing this or that randomly, and then call it
a day? Of course we roam. But superfi cial understanding of technical models is not enough.
Forms of engagement that give us the grasp needed for serious work are required.
We have those forms of engagement. Among them, drawing is primary. Technical drawing.
Drawing is not the only form of engagement with digital models. Other forms include (forms of
interrogation)
search
, and
count
, which are essential. But they’re not replacements for
attention-focusing acts of visual interpretation
, i.e., drawing.
For drawing, there is no substitute.
Why?
1.
Drawing sets up a structural dynamic of
INTERPLAY
, like a back and forth on a tennis
court. On one side of the court is our perception of the model:
WIDE
, expansive, a whole
thing like an environment. On the other side of the court is the set of clarifying acts of
NARROWING
interpretive focus. You
look at
a specifi c place in a modeled environment,
and clarify something there, at numerous (and signifi cant, illuminating) locations throughout
a model.
You can test this yourself, even in non-technical situations. See if you can understand your
own acts of narrowed attentive focus, without considering the wider environment around
you. Or, see if you can understand the wider environment, without attentive narrowing
focus. The absence of mutual interplay between environment and focus goes straight to
total unintelligibility. You can prove this to yourself in a few seconds.
It’s in the dynamic, in the interplay, that you think, study, learn. Understanding grows there.
It takes effort and has to be maintained energetically. Note of course, it’s a mental exercise
that until recently was completely unassisted by digital media.
2.
Just above the foundational level, of structuring the basic observable dynamic of the
development of thought and understanding — you agree it matters, right? — the interplay
produces pragmatic effects right away. You use it to ask and answer important basic
questions about the model: Is it done yet? Is it good enough? Where is it good enough
Where is it not good enough?
You use it also for assertion and affi rmation: Look here. I looked, and reviewed here. And
what should be shown here is shown here. Nothing that matters is missing here.
I affi rm it
.
Or: Look here, please. Something that matters is missing/wrong here. Fix it.
Be the cat!
On an AEC project, you are an attention-
focusing rig in a garden. You’re building a
mental model of the project, and in your
mind’s eye (as a mental exercise) you’re
positioning each drawing at its true
orientation in-situ within the mental model.
This, drawing, drawing your attention, is
the form of engagement targeted right at
the core of interpreting and understanding
models, aimed bullseye right at increasing
model utility and utilization.
But why have software companies left us
dependent on a strictly mental exercise of
visualization unassisted by digital media?
Particularly when the digital model so
obviously can assist with this, so
powerfully, so effectively. Why can I not
engage with incredibly complex technical
models, with the engagement handles (the
attention-focusing interpretive rigs, i.e., the
drawings) right where they are in-situ
WITHIN THE MODELS?
The question occurred to me after years of
ATTENTION-FOCUSING RIG (CAT) IN AN
ENVIRONMENT
building extremely detailed elaborate building models at architecture fi rms together with
structural and mechanical engineers modeling their domain systems.
First Gen Fusion
Software should do this for you. Digital modeled environments should show you the drawings
where they really are at true orientation within the models, automatically, supporting this
wide<>narrow, environment<>focus dynamic, the interplay, and the pragmatics that follow
immediately from it.
I was a user of MicroStation software and the Brics BIM module (TriForma) that ran on it, since
1996. In 2007 I wrote to Bentley Systems about this drawing-model fusion idea. Eventually this
led to my employment there leading the team that designed and developed the drawing-model
automated fusion features that were released in May 2012, then marketed as the so-called
“hypermodel,” a term that hopefully by now has been forgotten. I never liked it.
But, you know, it was the beginning. The form of engagement was there, right in the model.
The handles were screwed into the luggage. They didn’t fall off. The continuous mental
exercise, of fusion, fusion of clarifying focus IN the modeled environment, was assisted, fi nally,
to some extent anyway, by the software, by the digital modeled environment itself.
10 Years Gone
, and 8 software companies since 2012, that I know of, do this drawing-model
fusion automatically, now. I list them in the second paragraph here on my website with links to
each:
https://tangerinefocus.com/tangerine-2/earlier-media-innovations/
Good. But not good enough. That’s all fi rst generation fusion stuff. This is a primary form of
engagement with models and it’s going to continue to evolve. The form, that is, will evolve.
Second Gen Fusion: TGN
I’ve thought about this at length and I’ve proposed a second generation of this fusion as
primary form of engagement with digital models. I call it “TGN.” This time it’s a triple fusion of:
•
modeled environments
(of any kind)
•
technical “drawing”
(attention-focusing rigs)
•
techniques of camera control from the history of fi lm
(who’s better at techniques of
looking atthings?)
Regarding the latter (camera control), some intriguing examples are here on YouTube:
https://
youtu.be/yLHNBssyuE4
. The narrator mentions at the end,
“camera moves in fi lm, combining
informational control
and emotional positioning;
movement becomes the director’s
editorial voice.
”
Well, this is applicable in technical domains like engineering, architecture, and construction, far
more than you may at fi rst imagine.
This 2nd generation fusion is not just additive. It’s not just a sticking together of different
things, which was a fault of the 1st gen fusions. The 2nd gen has matured. This is about
recognizing the essential qualities of each of the ingredients and combining them in ways that
amplify each. Let’s say, TGN is like cooking, a kind of chemistry among the ingredients.
I wrote a software developer specifi cation for TGN. You can download it at my website:
https://tangerinefocus.com
(there also fi nd TGN demo and discussion videos).
TGN is a set of important enhancements to drawing-model fusion. The TGN developer spec is
open and free for anyone to use. It’s intended for use by software companies to implement
TGN features into their software products.
The proposed enhancements to drawing-model fusion (+ camera rig), TGN:
•
strengthen the perceptual interactive engagement with models
•
make richest possible use of available graphic expression for improving interpretive sense-
making power and effectiveness.
And the TGN spec also suggests:
•
a framework for standardizable cross-platform portability of these fusions, both 1st gen and
2nd gen (TGN), and
•
important improvements also in terms of OPENNESS —> to many sources of input into the
fusions, and output.
Let me assist you with your implementation. Message me:
https://tangerinefocus.com/contact-
us/
BIM Coordinators Summit 2022
I’m presenting TGN at the
BIM Coordinators Summit 2022
in Dublin in September. In my talk I’ll
illustrate details of the TGN spec. I’d like to emphasize,
I am looking for software
developers, or AE fi rms that do their own software projects, who want to develop the
generation 2 version of this
. It’s the future of technical drawing, THE form of engagement
with models.
TGN will make digital worlds more effective, useful, and engaging for
architects, engineers, builders, and facility occupants and operators.
At a minimum, TGN is aimed at making (all) models more engaging,
more intelligible, more clarifying, and therefore easier to use and more
useful to use, less tedious to use and more fun to use. More
interesting AND more practical. More informative. Let’s put it this way:
more a place where thinking happens and understanding grows. This
will attract more people, to do more things, with more models.
And guess what?
That’s gonna make models better.
To be clear, you develop TGN functions in
your
favorite software platform.
TGN is
NOT
, yet another, software product.
It just makes the software you love,
better.
Let’s do it!
Stay tuned for, as I’ll show in Dublin in September: an improved TGN demo, the TGN feature
set, ideas on how TGN development can be phased, a distinction between
standardized core
features
(for TGN portability from one app to another),
and the u
nlimited potential for tuning
and additional features
for anyone who wants to carry it further and do unique things in their
TGN implementation in their target app.
There should be (many) dozens of different implementations of TGN catering to many
specializations, in many apps and platforms, but all with a common minimum TGN standard
core, for the primary must-have critical base features that make up the basic visual Form of
Engagement with digital models, of all kinds.
Once it starts it won’t stop…
