The Designers 3D CAD Shootout 1999 Team Info and News

 May 23, 1999

Team Meeting in the Design Shootout Room 403 at 10:00 immediatly following the Press Conference.

 Jury Grading Form

Presentation Order Format

Required Elements

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Term Translator

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please email your complete addresses so that A/E/C SYSTEMS can make up your Jury Grader Gold Passport badge.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is an example of what is involved with this competition.

May 13, 1999

At the Team Meeting at AIA Dallas 5/5/99 we made a number of decisions about the grading criteria, the vignettes, and more. We will be posting the summary first to your email and then here.

May 3, 1999

Team Meeting at AIA Dallas 5/5/99

There will be a planning meeting for the Designers 3D CAD Shootout at the AIA Convention

AEC CAD Shoot Out Planning Meeting

4:30 - 6:00 pm

Wednesday May, 5 , 1999

Room D 323

Dallas Convention Center

AIA Staff Contact : Michael Tardif

Please make sure you are subscribed to the Team internet maillist for private communications.

Here is an example of what is involved with this competition.

Think you can do a building with your CADD software and want to propose a Team - send email about your intention

April 21, 1999

HP now a Sponsor of Design Shootout

Hewlett Packard has signed on as a sponsor of the Designers 3D CAD Shootout for Architectural CADD Systems, to be held May 26 at A/E/C SYSTEMS '99 in Los Angeles. In addition to advertizing and promotion, the direct benefit to the Team competitiors is that a color HP1000 printer/plotter will be right there to print out their Team's design. On Monday May 24th the plotter will be on site to print out the Team's Vignette A - the "enterprise vignette" which is a sample of a large project such as a shopping mall - to have on display in the A/E/C SYSTEMS entrance lobby. Then, following the Wednesday competition we will print out an post images from the building design charrette.

Team Meeting at AIA Dallas 5/5/99

There will be a planning meeting for the Designers 3D CAD Shootout at the AIA Convention, it is listed in the AIA program as :

> AEC CAD Shoot Out Planning Meeting

> 4:30 - 6:00 pm

> Wednesday, May 5, 1999

> Room D323

> Dallas Convention Center

> Staff Contact: Michael Tardif

Please have someone who represents your Team be there. We will finalize a number of your suggestions for improvements, have votes, clarify any changes, and so on.

An agenda for this meeting is forthcoming. Items to discuss and vote on are 1) the exact wording and categories for evaluation, 2) jury and emmcee members, 3) vignettes and how they are done, 4) the grading system, 5) the presentation order and timing, etc.

Following this meeting all the final rules governing this years competition will be printed up and distributed to everyone concerned.

Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999

Thank you enormously to Huw and Mark for your critiques and suggestions, we are looking for input on way to improve this whole thing and look forward to suggestions from all your colleagues.

It is in all our interests that every Team, software, and developer company look good, and have an opportunity to show everyone their great products and, particularly, show off the special abilities their CADD lets them do.

It hurts us all if a Team is not able to do well in a particular problem just because of the stress and time requirements, when we all know they could have excelled. There were a number of cases in 1998 where, in vignettes or the building design, where Teams severely stumbled in areas where we know and have seen them excell, and Huw is right, we certainly do not want to inform the buying audience incorrectly.

We have been hard at work over the past weeks at addressing a number of issues about the Design Shootout. We also are proposing evolutionary changes as opposed to totally changing an event which does seem to strike at least a number of right notes particularly with our audience.

Our first mission was to greatly shorten the amount of time for any Vignettes (if any) to show the audience more of the actual design process. As you know also, the results will not be announced until the next day - this gives us more time for the presentations (to make you all look good), and, with an overnight to compile and, as Mark says, judiciously go over checklists of required elements in the submissions, allows us to be more comprehensive and fair in the evaluations (which again, make you all look good). Another change, as Brad mentioned, is our "Enterprise Vignette" - which we have renamed as "Vignette Example A - Sample of Large Multi-Office Project" which partially addresses the concerns of Huw and Bentley and the issue that there is much more to architecture than just our little 3 hour building. Another thing you probably all guessed is that our 85,000 sf building last year stretched the high end limit of what our contest should be covering (although we are glad we did it) and that the project for 1999 would obviously be a much smaller building.

There is the strong possibility of a major printer/plotter manufacturer sponsor (which will for the moment remain nameless, but rest assured that all of you already have direct output for) which could give us the possibility of having color plots of your Vignette A (for instance a big RTKL shopping mall complex) on display boards in the entrance hall of A/E/C SYSTEMS for the whole show.

more freedom

With respect to the "Vignette Interview Mini-Problems", we have had a lot of discussions. In addition to having fewer, taking up less time, we felt strongly that the presenters should have much more freedom to show off their software features in whatever way helps them make their point. There is a need to go Team to Team with interviews in a "theme" to help the audience understand the comparative things about the software (which certainly worked better than the "skip us now" and blank screens we ran into in the years before the Vignettes). What we have come up with so far with the vignettes (and that is the way you spell it in the Architectural Dictionary) is not so much of a specific "mini-problem" where we ask for a specific stair or window or roof, but a chance for the Team spokesman to speak (and show) about their software's features in the theme topic - for instance the Roof Design Vignette would allow a presenter to show examples of all the nifty things they can do with roofs. Also, in contrast to Mark's comment that all the demos be live, we think that Lotus ScreenCams are perfect for this application, and Huw's suggestion that all those ScreenCams be then available on the Design Shootout web site is wonderful.

Certainly, a Team could make a strong point if they then also demonstrated a particularly easy and fast feature live on their systems, but, in general, if everyone kept to short ScreenCam type presentations, and then went on to talk about their current design progress - possibly mentioning how (or demonstrating) that particular theme is/was applied - then the audience will get the pattern.

There are some technical issues, obviously, as "ScreenCam" is a Win95 or NT specific solution, but we could entertain other proposals (i.e. QuickTime) just as we did to expand the VRML requirement to include 3DMF, QTVR and so on. We are pretty sure this should be an on the computer thing, as opposed to a talking, videotape, overhead projector, or slideshow type thing.

Thus, because these during-charrette interview presentations are not "mini-problems" but thematic examples and samples where you are free to do whatever PR you can about that area of abilities, we are calling them "Vignette Examples", and have reduced them in number from 8 to six and modified them somewhat. Site 3D contours, Space Planning, and ADA, are now just part of the main building design, and and interoperability becomes

part of Vignette A. Following is the proposed order as well. Thus, the audience will see big flashy finished projects in the early Vignettes and know they are samples, while there is still not much on the screen of their building charrette.

Vignette Examples

A. Large Multi-Office Projects

- sample major project emphasizing multi-discipline collaboration

- file transferability (to engineers, i.e. DWG, DXF, IFC)

- how many people can be coordinated with this particular CADD - enterprise solution

- Teams using software with small office orientation would tell us this and show sample CD's

- Also displayed on poster boards in the entrance hall to A/E/C SYSTEMS for the whole show

B. Special Features

- This is a PR opportunity to show off special abilities and unique features of the software

- i.e. links to FM, cost analysis, energy analysis, structural analysis, space planning,

- log wall construction, special drawing viewers, special web formats/links, etc.

C. Architectural Parametrics - Walls, Windows, and Doors

- This is a comparison of the two major paradymes in our industry - one of which uses smart macros

to plunk down lines/3D blocks, and the other which uses inserted architectural components

which have intelligent internal intelligence

D. Symbol Libraries and Smart Symbols - Insert a Given Symbol

- We will provide you a specific 3D DXF element, and want to see it in your custom library

- Demonstrate what symbols come with your software, how you retrieve, organize, and add to them

- What other abilities do symbols in the software have

E. Stairs, Ramps, and Elevators

- How does the software handle stair design, not just in 3D but 2D plans, sections, details

- In 1998 no one showed us any ramps or elevators, even these are required in almost every building. Architects want to see how your software can help them here.

F. Roof Design

- Show examples of all the nifty things they can do with roofs

- How are roof intersections and dormers handled

- How are roofs modified

Anyway, these are just a few of the modifications we are planning to make the Design Shootout even better. Other elements are better more equitable presentation timing, checklists on deliverables, the issue of beta software and other things for other messages. Keep sending in suggestions as many of the details are being worked out right now. Thank you all.

Beta software

Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999

There is actually no reason any Team should be using Beta Software.

This is not a forum for displaying all the new little features of your latest version - that is what is what your show booth is for - it is a forum for showing how architects USE the software. Practically by definition, this must mean software that architects have used and are familiar with, and have discovered necessary work-arounds for any potential limitations. To throw a team of architect designers in this time-sensitive grueling arena with brand-new software, beta or not, is cruel to them (as they would waste precious time trying to find, let alone learn, features), unfair to the developers (as those new features may not even get used, or worse yet, missused) and cruel to our evaluating audience who may get the misinterpretation that a perfectly wonderful software isn't useful or is clumsy when it it isn't.

Mark suggested something about possibly requiring that any beta software be publically available within 2 weeks after the competition. This isn't really workable, since the Design Shootout is more of an immediate performance event, and we simply cannot go about disqualifying people and changing the results two weeks afterwards. As both Mark and Huw have mentioned, we need to have it more definitive. However, as you all know, all this software is in continuous progress, and continual testing with various helpful architectural firms and the lines of "what is available" is actually quite blurry. This is particularly true of some of the smaller and startup CADD developers who don't really have many users as yet, and "publically available" could already include all their users using some kind of in-progress version. (In fact, until the glitches were worked out, some users regarded all eleven versions of AutoCAD 13 until release 13c4b to be "betas".) Even larger developers, who respond quickly to offices with special needs, will quickly burn CDs specially with those new features, which are indeed available to everyone who asks, and later included on stamp-manufactured CDs.

Even limiting the competition only to manufactured production CD versions doesn't work, as some developers production runs are small enough that ALL their CDs are specially burned. We also know that there can be a significant delay between when a given software is "done" and the entire shrinkwrapped package of helpfiles, tutorials, and manuals is completed. Also, some major developers have had "beta" runs of as many as 200,000 seats, which is twice the number of all the registered architects in the USA. Some manufacturers have never produced anything NOT designated "beta" for liability reasons.

So what is beta, and does beta mean different things to different people.

The criteria regarding this that we have had, which already addresses this issue is that :

an interested architect should be able to buy and take home the software used that day by the Team

The critical phrase here should be "take home" as we all know companies (such as Microsoft) who sold software which wasn't actually delivered for as much as 18 months (Windows 2.0) (which is some kind of record)(let's not get into whether any CADD developer companies have done this). CADD Developers kind of regard all their software as in development, and frequently the same software designated "beta" is then put into production with no changes - it can just be a matter of policy of how much testing (or liability) a given company wants to take on. To our audience of architects - "beta" means "not available" - well, if it IS available and they can buy it, take it home, and use it that day, then at least don't refer to it as beta in our competition.

Old Web Forum

October 22, 1998

The past couple of weeks we have been busily preparing for your upcoming design problem, and it is indeed a very interesting one that promises to be the best yet. It is most certainly a DESIGN problem, worthy of the intense attention of real architects. Thus, any of you who have PR people or CADD jockeys predominating your three person Teams will want to reconsider and make sure you have real architect designers who really know how to design with your Team's design software.

As mentioned earlier, we have a more intense interview process as we visit the Teams and see what you are working on during the 3 hour charrette portion of the competition. It will involve 6 "Vignette Interviews" each of about 3 minutes (and timed with an egg-timer for all to see). Only the first one will interview a designated non-Team member (preferably CEO) spokesman, the rest will be graphic topical mini-problems that should be do-able within 60 to 100 seconds and handled by two members (one computer) of your Team. All of the mini-problems will be announced before the day of the Design Shootout, so you can think of how to address the questions. Each of the mini-problems is designed to show us all how the software handles a specific important area of architectural design and how changes are accomodated.

Thus, to accomodate all this there are two minor changes :

We are adding 15 minutes to the Design Charrette - Thus you will now have 3 hours 15 minutes to do the comprehensive building design. Since we interviewed each Team in the past for a total of about 15 minutes, this represents an actual gain in time to work on the problem.

There will be no criteria design changes (as we announced every 30 minutes in the past) - This is because we feel the Vignette Interviews will suffice to show us how a designer makes changes in your software, and, because of the higher level of design required for this particular problem, you are going to need every second. We also felt that some Teams held back in the past, fearing that a nice design element (requiring time) could get blown away in a second depending on what one of the design criteria changes may have been.

Drawing Requirements stay the same (check the Web site) with one addition : - i.e. all Plans, Sections, Elevations, details of 3D elements, 12 perspectives, 2 renderings, 1 animation, 1 supplemental drawing (you specify), what we are adding is that you take at least one of those 3D views and merge it with one of the gif or jpg images of the site we will provide to each of you - i.e. photomontage to show your building on the site.

We will provide you with several gif and jpeg files of the site, as well as DXF and DWG files (in 2D) of the site, in ACAD 12, 13 and 14 formats, all just before the start of the charrette. (This to speed up the process of distributing these files at the beginning. You will just need to inform the audience and jury which files you used.)

October 15, 1998

We are currently evaluating whether the 3 "Auxiliary Team Members" are needed, wanted, or critically important to either the Teams effort or this competition, and would appreciate hearing from the various Teams on this matter before a decision is made. We wish to avoid having individuals or groups in the audience designing on paper or electronically, which could create a distraction, as well as confusion over what the software actually can do. Also, last year most Teams seemed to use the positions mainly to get their executives in free. The current thought is that we switch to 1 Auxiliary Team Member who will only be uses as an emergency understudy. We are also planning on a system of tickets to the event, and issuing 2 (possibly more) such tickets to each Team to use as they wish.

June 1, 1998

Invitations are just about to be sent out to potential Team competitors. Two different Teams raring to go have even jumped the starting gun by sending in their reservations early - Sigma Design with ARRIS (our 1996 winner), and AutodeskAEC with AutoArchitect.

There will be an informational meeting for the competitors at A/E/C Systems in Chicago, Thursday June 4, 1998 10:30am-11:00am.

The venues for the 1998 and 1999 events have been worked out with our co-sponsors :

The 1998 Designers 3D CADD Shootout will again be co-sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects and Architectural CADD Consultants and held during the BuildBoston98 Exposition in Boston, in November 1998.

The 1999 Designers 3D CADD Shootout will be co-sponsored by the A/E/C Systems and Architectural CADD Consultants (with possibly other co-sponsors including Boston Society of Architects) and held during the A/E/C Systems Conference and Exposition in Los Angeles, in June 1999.

May 27, 1998

One of the best things you can do to study how your Team can do better this year is to get the videos of the past competitions.

Important Issue - Limiting Competitors to 14

An issue that has come up with the success of this competition is the limitations of space in our current venue. Our space calculations find that we can accommodate two more Teams than last year in the same space in the same way. The current venue also puts each of those potential 14 Teams really in the face of the buying audience with the sloped amphitheater setting. Next year, at A/E/C Systems, there are pluses and minuses about being spread out in a type of mall at the expo. At issue, though, is this year. Were all the AutoCAD architectural programs to compete they would take up 7 places alone. Thus, we will have to judge who will compete based on which Teams get their paid registrations in by a more strict and earlier Team Registration deadline.

Advertising in the Design Shootout Program

Yes, your software indeed gets plenty of coverage in the Shootout itself. However, your architectural Team, busy with designing to the requirements, simply does not have enough time to mention ALL the features of your wonderful software. Also, if another Team starts to win big points with the audience by pointing out a new feature - you want to make sure they know your software has it too. This 1998 competition is the last one where an audience will actually be sitting there in one place for six hours watching the entire process - with time to carefully read your ad. Ok, to be honest, this is the only place in this competition where Geoff has any opportunity to make any money to break even on running this whole show, since he needs to remain independent, and cannot take money in any other way. So help support Geoff so he can continue to provide his unique even handed coverage of design software ! Besides, the Design Shootout Program is also sent on to everyone who orders a videotape (numbering in the thousands!), and each of the Jury Judges get a number to pass out to their clients looking for advice on software. This year, assuming enough ads, we plan some guidelines articles which will make it a useful "keeper" for designers shopping for CADD software. We also plan to start production much earlier - since the competition this year will not allow last-minute entries. The ad rates last year were $400 for full color pages. Turns out we need almost twice that to break even. Contact us if you are interested (subliminal: support Geoff) and we will work out details of ad rates for this year.

The registration fee for the 1998 event will be $1200, and increase of $200 over last year. The BSA is also raising the fee for the booth space at the BuildBoston98 exposition by some $200.

Official paperwork and registration forms should be ready later this week.

You are reminded that this is a competition of architects, not companies, and, even though the level of support and sponsorship by the concerned software developer companies has grown significantly, please keep this original orientation in mind. In fact, the voting jury and audience in 1997 seemed to very favorably react to the real architectural design team approach of the MiniCAD Team. Does this mean that architects unrelated to the software developer may compete with "their" software ? Quite honestly, yes, however we do give the developer companies the courtesy of sending out the invitation to compete to them first, and it is then opened up to all and any architect wishing to compete with that software only if the developer does not wish to be directly involved.

All past competitors will be sent an invitation to compete as well.

The past couple of weeks we have been busily preparing for your upcoming design problem, and it is indeed a very interesting one that promises to be the best yet. It is most certainly a DESIGN problem, worthy of the intense attention of real architects. Thus, any of you who have PR people or CADD jockeys predominating your three person Teams will want to reconsider and make sure you have real architect designers who really know how to design with your Team's design software.

As mentioned earlier, we have a more intense interview process as we visit the Teams and see what you are working on during the 3 hour charrette portion of the competition. It will involve 6 "Vignette Interviews" each of about 3 minutes (and timed with an egg-timer for all to see). Only the first one will interview a designated non-Team member (preferably CEO) spokesman, the rest will be graphic topical mini-problems that should be do-able within 60 to 100 seconds and handled by two members (one computer) of your Team. All of the mini-problems will be announced before the day of the Design Shootout, so you can think of how to address the questions. Each of the mini-problems is designed to show us all how the software handles a specific important area of architectural design and how changes are accomodated.

Thus, to accomodate all this there are two minor changes :

We are adding 15 minutes to the Design Charrette - Thus you will now have 3 hours 15 minutes to do the comprehensive building design. Since we interviewed each Team in the past for a total of about 15 minutes, this represents an actual gain in time to work on the problem.

There will be no criteria design changes (as we announced every 30 minutes in the past) - This is because we feel the Vignette Interviews will suffice to show us how a designer makes changes in your software, and, because of the higher level of design required for this particular problem, you are going to need every second. We also felt that some Teams held back in the past, fearing that a nice design element (requiring time) could get blown away in a second depending on what one of the design criteria changes may have been.

Drawing Requirements stay the same (check the Web site) with one addition : - i.e. all Plans, Sections, Elevations, details of 3D elements, 12 perspectives, 2 renderings, 1 animation, 1 supplemental drawing (you specify), what we are adding is that you take at least one of those 3D views and merge it with one of the gif or jpg images of the site we will provide to each of you - i.e. photomontage to show your building on the site.

We will provide you with several gif and jpeg files of the site, as well as DXF and DWG files (in 2D) of the site, in ACAD 12, 13 and 14 formats, all just before the start of the charrette. (This to speed up the process of distributing these files at the beginning. You will just need to inform the audience and jury which files you used.)