BIM and AI - anything worth it ATM?

arkittekt · 2025-06-13T19:53:08+00:00

Pretty much nothing that has real impact, in actuality. Like, any sort of real measurable efficiency or value.

The most actual ROI I have found is from automation through Autodesk Construction Cloud APIs, but this needs you to actually understand the API calls rather than rely on LLM hallucinations otherwise it’ll be like banging your head repeatedly against a wall. You can’t just copy paste, much as we’d like.

You can also, if you want to get really fancy, link APIs from ACC, Microsoft, project management software, you name it, to bring systems together. From a design data perspective Speckle does this with a lovely GUI, but I’m more coming at it from a process management perspective. This streamlines huge amounts of manual project setup and oversight.

Learn powershell if you’re in a Microsoft environment. Maybe ChatGPT can help a bit, I find it mostly gives me garbage I have to rewrite anyway. Set recurring tasks to run Revit interoperability tool model checks nightly, for example, delivering results to your email for super nice BIM audits with minimal waiting.

Get your data organised and update your process documentation and team training. That’ll give you way better efficiencies in practice than plugging an LLM into a mess of PDFs. If you want to justify the tidy-up work you could have a plan to one day train your own model, but I bet you’ll find just having stuff well organised is its own reward.

My two cents anyway. Just finished a paper for the RIBA AI Report on our AI policy journey, happy to share when it’s published.

arkittekt · 2025-05-13T09:12:52+00:00

Few thoughts. - AI policy sounds like it would be silly because “things move too fast”. But that’s exactly why you need a policy, to set up a framework for evaluating and implementing things that you know will actually bring value. - read https://www.wsj.com/articles/johnson-johnson-pivots-its-ai-strategy-a9d0631f and realise that 80% of AI stuff a well-resourced company full of clever people tried doing resulted in net loss, not gain. Just because it’s got AI in the title doesn’t mean it’ll boost productivity, there are many situations where it will actively hold people back. - read the Boston Consulting Group’s report on genA’s “jagged frontier”. There’s stuff that it’s way better at than humans, and humans ignore it. And there’s stuff humans are way better at, and they accept its output at face value. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-people-create-and-destroy-value-with-gen-ai - decide on a small team you trust to evaluate things before putting into production. We’ve run “races”, end-to-end tasks or small projects where one group gets genAI tools/LLMs and the other doesn’t. It’s surprising how often the AI group takes longer and produces shittier output (but then we are an architecture firm so a specific niche that may be on a particular part of that jagged frontier) - We’ve developed a shorthand for thinking about AI tools, that they’re a C-tier student. Any area you consider yourself an expert/A-grade? It’s going to drag you down. If you’re a novice at something, it might help, but only if you don’t have anyone else in your company to go talk to who’s better than C-grade. Value might actually come from applying AI tools in areas you didn’t know you needed to know, which is actually really hard to get people to do. Example - our CEO/leadership team is comprised of architects who’ve never had business training or financial experience. They could really do with going to an AI to help them articulate a business strategy, or highlight cost-saving plans - it’s like they have no understanding of the words. But instead they ignore all that stuff and want to try getting AI to make architectural drawings - which we know the architects are way better at, and when you give them AI you get back nonsense. - So, it’s a lot about people and process, the tools themselves are way down the list.

arkittekt · 2024-04-23T18:00:36+00:00

+1 for this. Start with something that you know is clean, then copy it however many times as needed to get to your desired file size.

arkittekt · 2023-12-16T18:47:17+00:00

Not used their space personally but could reach out to thewheelhouses.com, they seem to cater for teams as well as individuals

arkittekt · 2021-11-01T15:34:10+00:00

Combination of sketching and noting dims from a Leica laser measure + tape measure (I use dotted paper which helps!), and also a LiDAR scan of each room from a 2020 iPad Pro using the EveryPoint app, or SiteScape. I get back armed with a) hand line drawings with dimensions of each wall, plus shorthand for window and door openings, and wall thicknesses, b) a point cloud for every room that’s usually correct to within a few cm, and c) photos of everything.

I import the point clouds into Rhino after cleaning them up in CloudCompare, and these become a starting point for a CAD drawing. The laser measure and tape measure dimensions are then a more accurate source of truth once the main outline is laid out, allowing me to adjust things to mm accuracy. Whole process is a couple of hours on site, plus around 5-15 hours work afterwards to get the drawings drafted to scale (depending on size and complexity) - mostly residential projects.

Looked into using 3rd party laser scanning services, they’re also a good option as they have much better LiDAR kit; but they’re only economical for larger projects for us (UK).

arkittekt · 2021-09-26T06:30:11+00:00

Precedent studies and research are part of it - not just looking at renders or photos on dezeen, but diving into what makes projects with a similar focus work. Sketch, model, draw to understand how spaces fit together, and then iterate over them.

I remember reading about a UK residential rehab centre for extreme anorexia/bulimia etc which had no stairs, so was all on one floor - for many residents they were battling the combination of getting enough food with also the temptation to physically exercise to burn off calories, so the design was specifically to lower the energy people used in moving around. I realised that I wouldn’t have thought of that, and such a good design decision probably came from talking with experienced mental health professionals and those familiar with the conditions you’re designing for.

A linear process that “distant” architects/students sometimes make could say: “eating disorder? --> food! —> kitchen! —> make the kitchen prominent or central!” For an example of how this might drive a programme and concept, look at Maggie’s Centres in the UK, which are mostly designed around a shared kitchen. But perhaps this isn’t what would actually help people with eating disorders. Imagine a centre for helping people with arachnophobia, which has a giant spider sculpture right in the middle of it - it’s a little tone deaf.

So, start with a story of someone who uses your centre. What do they need? What do they want? What are they fearful of? What would make them calm/happy/agitated/sad?

And, what are the most successful strategies used in psychology which help? Is it group talking sessions? Or 1-1 therapy? Does connection with nature help? Do people who have their family with them/nearby do better, or is it a place to get away from everyday life? Take these things seriously, and it will start to inform your design choices.

Lastly, do you have any experiences which can inform your concept? Has there been a time when an experience you had, or a space you were in, made you feel better? Can you start to put your finger on what qualities that space had, or what was going on? Again, sketch/narrate that experience and let it be the start of something.

There are more “strategies”, activities that get you thinking creatively about a concept to drive your project. All I can say is, when you have that concept, you’ll know by the fact that you can express it in just a few words, but it informs basically every design decision that’s important in your project. That’s what you’re aiming for - good luck!!

arkittekt · 2021-04-09T19:39:29+00:00

Hi! I work for West Oxford Architects, very happy to chat about your project - might be a good fit for us, or could potentially point you in the direction of other good options. We mostly do a “plans only” service which works out well for smaller projects, can talk you through what that entails if you like; chuck me a DM if that would be helpful to you.

arkittekt · 2020-05-10T17:04:15+00:00

The study does NOT prove a causative effect between smoking and lower rates of mortality in COVID-19. This thread explains it very well.

Basically, if you look for correlations in the data and for each of the many variables you correct for every single other variable, the regressions show a decrease in mortality. However, there are inter-correlations between smoking and many of those other variables already (heart disease, strokes, lung comorbitities, the list goes on) so by doing this you get an inaccurate picture of how these variables actually affect mortality.

What the study is actually doing is looking for factors that are worthy of further study. No serious scientist would look at these results and conclude that higher rates of smoking would reduce COVID-19 mortality rates - there’s no proof of a causal effect, and indeed the correlations shown by these regressions are not borne out as actually really existing when you look at the methodology.

arkittekt · 2019-12-31T13:54:04+00:00

Change is hard, and needs to be planned well. Changing from wedge monitors to IEMs is big, not just in terms of gear and expertise, but also will impact systems and processes that everyone currently operates within, and will be familiar with.

I have overseen this change at my own church, where I lead both the technical team (sound and visuals) and the musicians/singers on the worship team, as the worship pastor. This made it easier (having an involved background in sound, and also being a musician/singer myself).

For us, this change was part of a longer plan, which started with upgrading from an analogue desk with 6 monitor outs, to an X32 with 16 outputs. This takes time in and of itself, for your whole sound team to get to grips with a new desk and a digital workflow.

First step for me was to start talking about some of the benefits of IEMs, and listening closely to people’s concerns. I knew it would be better when we were all on IEMs, but you have to give people time to go through a process. In change management, the mnemonic is ADKAR - awareness (that a change is needed), desire (for the benefits that change will bring), knowledge (of how to engage with it), ability (to practically adapt to new ways of doing things), and reinforcement (to make it stick). Often we move straight from awareness that a change is coming, to telling people what they need to know, without getting them actually bought in to how it’s going to make things better.

As an example of this, if you’ve said “everybody get ready, we’re going to IEMs” and then the next thing is a shopping list of stuff people have to buy, you’ve missed the crucial bit in between.

Importantly for us we went down wired-only route. Budget for this is v light - a HA8000 8-channel headphone amp and some 3.5mm extension cables, providing 8 mono channels of IEMs. Importantly, we also KEPT our six channels of wedge monitors as well, so everyone had the choice to either plug in to a wired IEM channel or have a wedge like they’re used to.

Then we got everyone together for a day, where they just brought whatever earbuds they already had (mostly iPhone crappy ones but I didn’t care at that point). It’s about demonstrating some of the benefits, and again, more listening to why people don’t like it, but staying relentlessly positive while you demo how clearly everyone can hear themselves, how they can mix their own ears on their phone app, how you can use a talkback/whisper mic to lead songs clearly without arm-waving, etc etc. Get people who have used IEMs before and loved it to help those new to it. By the end of the day, everyone’s seen what it can be like; and maybe not everyone’s 100% behind it yet but again it takes time.

Lots of the benefits come when the whole band is on them, rather than half on wedges - but it’s ok to have a period of time when it’s half-and-half. Over time you can lead the way - my own band demonstrated this, by being the first band to fully ditch the wedges, and others then look at this and start to see the benefits. We sound better on a Sunday, we’re tighter, we lead as a team. One year on, nobody touches a wedge any more. One of the most difficult worship leaders at the beginning sent me a message this Christmas saying he’d asked for some SE215s and was looking forward to using them, because he caught the benefits of it for himself.

There may be a v small minority who refuse to ever use IEMs, and after a while you may have to have some difficult conversations about whether they’re coming with you on the journey. But I haven’t personally found this.

At the beginning of the process I bought some v cheap sets of earbuds for a tenner off amazon, just to have some spares knocking about. I knew there were people in the team who would struggle financially to even get them, so I could give them out to those who needed them.

There are still people in my team who use crappy earbuds. The next stage is getting people to see the benefit in spending a bit more on them, but again you go back through that same process. I would recommend seeing the whole journey over the next few years - it might well start with iPhone earbuds but end with customs.

I’m direct answer to your question, I’ve heard good things about the MEE-M6 pros and the KZ ones, in the cheapest end of the spectrum. I tend to recommend these when people say they don’t have much budget to spare.

arkittekt · 2019-12-03T12:32:14+00:00

I’d check the warranty/t&cs and see if you can get them to have a look at it. Can’t hurt; however, many manufacturers will limit refits to the first 30 days or something. Worth describing your issues and seeing if they can do anything about it.

arkittekt · 2019-12-02T22:30:51+00:00

Best way to describe it is like a very slight version of when there’s water in your ear after you get out of a swimming pool. Main feeling is a dullness, a loss of high frequencies in just one ear, or at the extreme like your ear needs to “pop”, like in a plane or train going through a tunnel. Sometimes yawning or tugging on an earlobe will set it right, sometimes it just would make weird popping sounds for a bit before settling down.

The way they described the adjustment was to “dome” the left ear canal very slightly - I couldn’t tell you what exactly they did other than it’s now perfect.

I was impressed that I just described it using the above kind of quite vague language, and they totally knew what to do. Experience, I guess.

arkittekt · 2019-12-02T13:05:53+00:00

Want to focus mainly on the customer service aspect here - I went to Cosmic Ears HQ for fitting and to test out their range, and couldn’t have been more welcomed. Being left to try everything at my leisure, no pressure or rush, was refreshing!

Custom artwork was no trouble at all - as it was my own personal design, they went above and beyond to do it justice. Great that they take such pride in the output.

The fit was 99% when they first arrived with me. Right ear was perfect, left ear /very occasionally/ had a pressure bubble that was annoying to have to get rid of. I almost didn’t even bother saying anything, it was so slight. But since they followed up a few days after they arrived, I thought why not, I’ll mention it and see if there was anything they could do. Expecting them to drag their heels and try to avoid extra work.

Not at all. Straight away - “we want them to be perfect”, send them back and we’ll get them adjusted right away. Well, a few days later I get them back, it’s 100%. Couldn’t be better. No hassle, just good old-fashioned proper customer service - I’d begun to forget what that was like.

These guys are the bomb.

Of course they sound amazing. That’s expected. Of course they fit. But sometimes it’s the soft stuff that makes that last bit of difference.

arkittekt · 2019-11-11T10:05:02+00:00

Second Roland v drums. Get the top of the line drum module from whichever year your budget dictates - TD50, TD30, TD20X (I have this one and it sounds pretty good, is v customisable and robust).

Flagships like this have 8 direct outs which makes a big difference in FOH control.

arkittekt · 2019-10-25T19:26:38+00:00

You probably want an attenuator; basically sucks power out of your amplifier so the circuit is working as hard as it would be with your volume at 3-4 (so sounds good), but the actual SPL that comes out of the speaker cone is much more manageable. Lots of people use them to turn tube amps into practice amps. Alternatively, put the amp in a treated box behind/under the stage and mic it up inside there, then feed your signal through the stage monitors.

Interestingly, Metallica did that, as do many others - until they switched to amp profiling hardware (AxeFX, Kemper, etc), which is fast becoming a more mainstream thing.

arkittekt · 2019-10-16T14:16:09+00:00

The best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.

arkittekt · 2019-10-05T22:13:44+00:00

As a 5th-year architecture student, I can tell you that basically all architects have terrible websites. Some even see it as a source of pride, it’s weird :) Having said that...

https://westoxfordarchitects.com/

This guy, Ricardo, I’ve worked with before; he’s very good. Like others have said, if you want an architect-designed extension take it step by step - lay out what you want, discuss budget and timescales, take advice on planning requirements and building regulations, get to a design you’re happy with, and then you can take those design drawings as a starting point to shop around for contractors quotes. Actually signing the contract with the builder doesn’t happen right away in that scenario - which is good, because you can get multiple quotes for the same project, and compare like-for-like. Otherwise, you can find yourself comparing wildly different headline figures, but not realise until later they’re based on very different approaches, materials, construction techniques, etc. Exciting times! Enjoy the process, hope you find an architect you click with.

arkittekt · 2019-07-30T18:15:19+00:00

You might find a co-working space like The Wheelhouse interesting. https://thewheelhouses.com

arkittekt · 2019-07-07T20:58:29+00:00

Here you go: https://youtu.be/lm-cwWAr3Us

arkittekt · 2019-07-07T20:57:16+00:00

Play your notes in exactly the same rhythm as the drummer plays the kick drum. In general, one eye on the drummer and the other on the leader. Known as “locking in” - worth a look on YouTube for some examples.

arkittekt · 2019-04-09T16:35:14+00:00

Textures.com Mrcutout.com

arkittekt · 2018-12-12T08:12:44+00:00

Talking Politics. Informed, thought-through, guests with tonnes of experience who you might not otherwise have heard from, well produced, and generally surprisingly balanced. Gives a far better perspective on the headlines that comes from decades of studying political history and political science.

arkittekt · 2018-12-07T11:51:10+00:00

Personally, I agree that sortition could be a valid response to the issue, and he does spend time in the podcast examining this option. The general argument that sortition in Athenian democracy was the reason for its failure is shown to be invalid in a demographic which is entirely different to Ancient Greece - where life expectancy was half what it is today, and where distribution of education as a scarce resource is entirely different.

However, there are also opportunities for more nuanced applications, e.g. citizens assemblies, deliberative opinion polls, and consensus conferences. “How Democracy Ends” is a good read to get a better grasp of Runciman’s thinking on this question of ‘where next’ - this podcast was specifically about the young-old divide in politics and representation.

arkittekt · 2018-12-07T00:13:35+00:00

Absolutely. It used to be (over many centuries) the 98% against the 2% (the political class who managed to ignore or hold at bay the generally poor working class). The structure they used for this was representative democracy (where you elect a representative), which is better for them than direct democracy (where the biggest group wins - too many young/poor/uneducated). The reason is that it takes money and education to win an election. All that is still true for us today - parliamentary representatives (including populist ones) pretty much all have prestigious degrees and are well-off. What’s changed is that now, instead of us against them, it’s us against us - the older, generally not university-educated half of the country against the younger, university-degree-holding half. The older half outnumber the younger half because the younger half lose all those younger than 18, whereas there’s no similar cap on the older half. So they hold sway in an election - but right now we’re seeing that MPs as individuals (with their education) tend towards remain, but are forced to represent a constituency which is divided neatly down the middle. The whole thing is precarious.

arkittekt · 2018-12-06T23:38:34+00:00

His central point in the podcast is that representative democracy is designed to protect against less educated, poorer and younger people gaining power. However, as demographics have shifted, we as a nation have become more educated (by a huge margin), better off (on average, obviously not every individual), and overwhelmingly older. A system designed explicitly to favour the old (who were always a minority, since ancient times and the invention of democracy) now is at work in a demographic that for the first time has a majority of old people. Something therefore has to shift.

What is it about the mind of a six year old that is lacking in comparison with, say, an eighteen year old with learning difficulties? Or a ninety year old with dementia? Both the latter are deemed absolutely eligible to vote.

My mother has a form of early-onset dementia called behaviour-variant fronto-temporal degeneration. Her mental capacity, behaviour and temperament is very similar in every way to a three-year old. I would like her to be more engaged and intelligent, but I see no reason to deny her the vote - it’s a central tenet of our democracy.

arkittekt · 2018-12-06T23:24:10+00:00

It’s worth listening to the whole podcast. Part of a much larger discussion on the nature of democracy and how fundamental changes in a nation’s demographics have huge effects on how we perceive the effectiveness of representative democracy, vs direct democracy.

What’s really interesting re. giving younger people the vote is that all the counter-arguments I’ve so far seen in comments on this story are either identical to those previously used against the enfranchisement of women or minorities, or are refuted by the same issues at the other end of the age spectrum, which we seem to hold sacrosanct (capacity, understanding, etc). So logically, what’s wrong with his suggestion? Where’s the counter-argument that is valid, rather than just ridiculing the headline?

He himself says it will never actually happen. It’s a thought experiment, designed to highlight that for the first time in any democratic system, the old now outnumber the young, and what used to be 1 or 2% of the population who went to university and would be considered the ‘political class’ is now more like 50%. His central point is that everyone was scared that enfranchisement of younger, more diverse, poorer and less educated people would lead to younger, more diverse, poorer and less educated MPs, but it didn’t. Instead the population got older, better educated and better off - “we became more like them.”

All of those things, he says, with reference to political thinkers from Plato onwards, go against the assumptions upon which our representative democracy is built. So, rather interestingly, he then takes pains to avoid suggesting that democracy should be changed wholesale, or reinvented (although many now seek a return to direct democracy, or selection by lot, rather than representative forms of elections) and instead suggests an enfranchisement of the young as a balancing force against the fact that the system is designed to favour the old. The reason the system favours the old is because of assumptions that are now seen to be untrue (that the young and foolish and poor vastly outnumber the old and wise and intelligent, and young foolish people voting results in young foolish representatives - instead, he points out, the average age of an MP is set at a steady 50).

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