OPEN BOOK The new home of the Bridge Academy, a secondary school in a low-income area of Hackney, London, will be a complex seven-story, terraced building, fitted into a relatively small site. With a focus on mathematics and music, the school is one of many specialist academies being built by the British government. It is sponsored by UBS, a global financial services firm. — Published 2007.0124
	BENTLEY PARAMETRICS "Smart geometry" technology has been coming to life in the field of digital architectural design and fabrication. Even those unfamiliar with the parametric modeling approach have seen its effects in innovative building forms over the past few years. Among those collaborating to advance education and research in the area of advanced 3D CAD applications is a small group of scientists, architects, and inventors — the Smart Geometry Group. — Published 2006.1213
	ACADIA AT 25 This year the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) marked its first quarter century of involvement in promoting the use of computers to enhance design creativity in architecture, planning, and building science. — Published 2006.1115
	MODELING RULES As we leave the 20th century behind, we must discover, refine, and implement new tools, new roles, and new practices to unify the fragmented AEC industry and efficiently cope with the complexities of today's intricate business and legal climate. — Published 2006.1011
	3D PDF In the past, various 3D formats (such VRML, 3DS, 3DMF, and o2c) have been touted as "the 3D PDF" (portable document format). But their opportunity to become the de facto standard may have passed. In January 2006, Adobe unveiled its own 3D format software, called Adobe Acrobat 3D, which actually uses the latest PDF file format. As with those other formats, a free viewer is available. — Published 2006.0913
	MODEL MILLING Rapid prototyping technologies such as 3D printers and stereolithography have achieved some popularity in producing architectural models. But these methods are limited in the size of the models they can produce, and they require expensive materials. So at School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, we have been working with computer numerical control (CNC) milling to produce architectural models. We have demonstrated the utility of CNC machining by producing a 1:33 scale model of a curvilinear, precast-concrete structure for the Ballingdon Bridge in Suffolk County, England. — Published 2006.0816
	MIAMI METALS Futurist Alvin Toffler said: "You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." He was probably not referring specifically to architecture students, but his statement applies well to students thinking about design concepts when learning to use computer-aided design applications. — Published 2006.0726
	IFCS CONNECT An important milestone in software development for the building industry over the past decade has been the establishment of Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) — freely available, nonproprietary data model specifications. Now the IFCs are being applied toward automating code checking and other kinds of complex analysis. — Published 2006.0614
	GOOGLE'S GLOBE In the fall of 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, a global satellite imaging program that offers users anything from an astronaut's view of the earth down to a bird's eye view of a taxi double-parked in a city street. But unlike some computer software that stagnates after being acquired, this product, now dubbed "Google Earth," has only become better. — Published 2006.0524
	DIGITAL PHYSICAL MASHUP In my third-year architectural design studio at the California Polytechnic State University, assignments are crafted to encourage students to refine skills in both digital and analog media — physical modeling and traditional drawings — to allow them to see the advantages and disadvantages of both, to develop a critical attitude toward media, and to develop a design project using these tools. Early design exercises are exploratory, and students are encouraged to use form-Z for its iterative ability and its facility in generating rich graphic vocabularies that suggest spatial character and experience. This is balanced with physical-model building and traditional drawings to sort out issues of scale and siting. Later exercises require students to translate early vocabularies into functional building elements. — Associate Professor Thomas Fowler, IV — Published 2006.0419

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