Lab-3 Friday 10-12 Regraded

The lab 3 for Friday 10am-12pm session has been re-graded. Points have been added back for question 4 and 5 for following the correct approach. Let Jingjie know if anyone still has questions.

Revit Question

Question

“There are three things in the requirements that I cannot figure out how to do.  They are: Shading on of the perspective views, 'Mark' width and height of door, and 'Family' information.”

Answer

Shading

One of the properties of a view is how it appears. It’s named “Visual Style”.  Changing that will change how the view is shaded.

 

Door (and Window) Information

“Mark” and “height” and “Family” are all properties of a door that are listed as possible items to include in the schedule.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grades Updated

The cumulative grade calculation was updated today (10/25/2010 at 11:45AM) to reflect the following ingredients using the weights in the syllabus:

• Attendance – 15 sessions through 10/25/2010
• Discussions – D2, 3, 4
• Labs – L1, 2, 3

As before remember that this is a “raw” score that does not make the allowance for dropping low scores and missed attendance.

Jim Mitchell

Revit Lab–Lessons from the labs 10/22/2010

 

Below are some suggestions that I gathered during the four sessions today.

• Read the Assignment – Not just the Tutorial

• The assignment has specific requirements

• The tutorial actually covers more material than is required for the assignment.

• Save Early, Save Often

• Several people lost most of the work because they hadn’t saved

• Don’t be afraid to start over

• We all make mistakes when starting.  It’s often easiest to just do it again

• Save to the desktop

• You can then copy the file to a flash drive or email it home.

• When drawing a floor (or roof)

• Be sure the sketch is totally “closed”

• Click on the green checkmark

• Constrain the wall top to the 2nd Level

• It’s best to do so when drawing your first wall element. Thereafter all walls will be so constrained.

• Print-to-PDF depends on having Adobe Acrobat

• It creates a “printer” that produces a file instead of a physical page.

• All the machines in the CadLab have Acrobat

• There are free substitutes available that you can install on your own machine

• Put a dimension on your longest wall

• That will help the graders and ensure you meet that requirement.

• The dimension tool is the top mini-ribbon

 

Jim Mitchell

Understanding Drawing Information

Question

“My Group is having a difficult time identifying the cross sectional dimensions from the TP Bridge Sketch that you provided us. We found the width and the height from the given drawing, also we have all of our measurements we made of the width, height, and cross sectional dimensions. Are there any tips you can provide us for figuring out how to read the cross sectional dimensions from the TP bridge PDF you supplied us? Thanks for your time.”

Response

You should be able to read the dimensions of the elements of the bridge on the drawings that are contained in the resources folder.  One particularly helpful drawing is the one entitled “Continuous Truss Details.

On that drawing and elsewhere a typical notation is 4 Ls  6 x 4 x 3/8.  This translates into a statement that member contains four angle pieces (in cross section) with the length of the two legs being 6” and 4”, and a thickness of 3/8”.  From that kind of information for each component of the member and an estimate of the length of the member you can calculate its volume and thus its weight.

If you cannot find specific information about a member it’s OK to extrapolate from what you already know – just identify the extrapolation.

Remember that this is an estimate.  We expect you to have considerable uncertainty in your results, but still be a plausible to an order of magnitude.

PS.  If I were doing this assignment I’d make use of Excel to keep all my parts and pieces orderly.

Jim Mitchell

Tributary Area Calculation

Question

“My team and I were wondering what exactly tributary area was and how to implement it.  We have been attempting to do it, but we do not feel comfortable that we are going about it the right way in question 6.  If at all possible, could you provide us some information as to how to calculate the tributary area and perform the calculations for question 6.”

Response

The tributary area is the portion of the bridge that contributes to the load on the pier.  In a symmetrical situation such as this it’s everything that’s from the centerline to the outer edge of the bridge, and everything to halfway to the next pier on each side.  In plan it’s a big rectangle, and in elevation it includes everything that is carried by the pier.

Jim Mitchell

Calculating the Weight + Report Structure

Question

“We are having trouble with the lab that is due this week. We know the length, width and thickness of the members which connect to U9 because we measured them. Do we use the area of the length*height in our calculations or something else? Also, do we multiply the weight by 2 because there are 2 beams per member? I was wondering about the structure of the lab too. Does a structure that has an abstract, introduction, data and calculation, and results/conclusion sound like everything we need? Thank you for your time.”

Calculations

The goal of the lab is to estimate the “dead load” on a given pier.  Essentially you need to decide what members (including the bridge deck) contribute to the load on that pier.  The assumption is that you’ll calculate the volume of those members using the information on the drawings as verified by your field and then calculate the weight using the information provided in the lab report on densities.

Lab Report Format and organization

Your overall format for the report is fine.  I’d recommend realizing that there are seven specific tasks identified.  You’ll probably help the grader, and yourselves, if you break the report down by those tasks.

 

Jim Mitchell

Drawing Program for Lab L4

 

Question

“I have a question concerning the Lab Report #4. For the drawings that are required for question 2 of the report, what program are we supposed use to develop them and how are they supposed to approximately look?

Any program that you want that achieves the result:

• Autocad is fine
• So is the drawing program within MS Word or Excel.
• A good candidate is the free Inkscape

There are also many free websites that can produce images – such as Gliffy

Jim Mitchell

Discussions–Late Submissions

The course website wasn’t clear about whether we would accept late submissions for Discussions.  Since the point of the discussions is to prepare you for the topic of the week our general intent was not to accept late discussions.  In light of the lack of explicit statement of that policy up till now here is what I’ve advised the graders:

• Starting next week (Week-6) we will not accept late Discussion submissions
• For late submissions up to now we will allow them if they were submitted by the start of class on Wednesday of the week the discussion was due.
• A penalty of approximately 2 points will be applied to those that meet this criteria.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grades as of 10/17/2010

I turned on the Grade Calc column in VistaBB today and made sure that the columns for all the assignments so far are visible.  The following notes should help you interpret what you see there.

What’s included in the calculation

• Attendance – 11 possible
• Discussion D2, D3
• Note that some grades have been issued for D4, but it is not included in the calculation at this time – it will be when I update it.
• Labs L1, L2

Notes on the Calculation

• This is a “raw” calculation that does NOT yet take into account the allowance for missed attendance.  Nor does it drop your lowest discussion and lab.
• We will make that adjustment before calculating the final grade, but for now you’re seeing the score without those adjustments.
• If you wish to calculate your own grade as a check, the grade calculation uses the “weights” show on the “Assignment Weights” page in the syllabus.

Dealing with errors in the calculation

If you believe there is an error in the calculation (e.g. missing grade that should be present, you should email me soon, NOT at the end of the term.

Jim Mitchell – James.Mitchell@Drexel.edu

Lab-1 Grader’s Comments

• Significant digits for the answers are determined by the input with LEAST number of significant digits.
• Use scientific notation for very small and very large numbers.
• Name variables to make your calculation easy-to-follow.
• Take advantage of the yellow box for grading criteria on each spreadsheet, in order to make the correct and complete answer.
• Don’t forget to work on your memo, which weighs more than some questions!

Grader’s Suggestions for Discussion Posts

The following suggestions come from one of the graders after reading the first week’s discussion posts.

• Make sure that you post in the right category.  "Civil Engineering" doesn't mean that the topic is about civil engineering, it means that you ARE a civil engineer.  If your major is not Civil/Architectural or Environmental Engineering, you post in the "Other" category.
• Make sure to include what is most interesting and most confusing in your discussion.
• Include citations for both articles that you read.

Jim Mitchell