This week, students and mentors met at CannonDesign’s office to further develop their programmed spaces through structural decisions and application of ideas into BIM. Engineers from Thornton Tomasetti gave a presentation on common structural systems and the different effects varying loads can have on those structures. The students compared steel building systems to concrete systems, discussing benefits and drawbacks to each one. After gaining a better understanding of how the weather and climate in Chicago can affect the construction process and the building itself, students decided that a steel brace framed structure would be the most efficient system for the school.

To introduce the capabilities of BIM, CannonDesign provided a presentation about REVIT.  In addition to BIM introduction, a REVIT tutorial was given introducing the students to the software program revealing the capabilities of 2D and 3D modeling. Learning the basics, students learned to draw walls, place doors and windows, add furniture from a component library and standard dimension and aligning features. Each student was able to work in REVIT developing their schemes for the Student Hub, Maker-Lab, Admin Support/Dining and Bio-Tech. By the end of the evening each group was working in a central REVIT model bringing their massing model to a 3D digital model.