Connect!2021

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Revision as of 22:12, 19 October 2021 by JanF (talk | contribs)

OSArch at Connect! 2021 conference

This is a draft of the presentation of OSArch community at the Speckle Connect! conference, taking place online on the 19.-21.10.2021. Our time slot is reserved on Tuesday 20.10. at 15:00UTC and the idea is to give a short live introduction to our ideas and then to present a few ca. 5min videos showing the currently most popular projects of our members.

The event: https://speckle.community/t/connect-talks-and-workshops-from-the-industry-pioneers-from-leading-startups-and-companies/1731

The schedule can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eSQGNmSmBU5oJ5tRykBp3wBkiLclhclZ1p7lqtE7TBU/edit?usp=sharing

Basic info

  • a session title:
    • Introducing the OSArch community
  • a session subtitle/hedaline:
    • OSArch is for the architects, engineers, designers, builders, planners, operators, and you. Let's change the industry together.
  • (optionally) a longer description:
    • The Open-Source Architecture Community brings together like-minded users and developers who share a common goal: that the built environment can be designed, constructed, operated, and recycled with free/libre and open-source software, with increased transparency, and a more ethical approach. We’re creating a place where everyone involved in the built environment’s conception and life can meet, inspire and collaborate to develop empowering digital tools.
    • In this session we'll introduce our group a bit, tell you why we think having an open and free software environment is important for the Architecture-Engineering-Construction industry and show you what we're doing about it - we'll present five of the current projects our members work on - BlenderBIM add-on, IFC Toolbox, Topologic, Homemaker and FreeCAD BIM Workbench.
  • name of the speaker/s, they should also register to the event and fill their attendee profiles, so I can add them as presenters and they will automatically get presenter control when the session starts
    • Introduction - Jan Filipec (live)
    • BlenderBIM add-on - Dion Moult (recording)
    • IFC Toolbox - Yousheng Wang (recording)
    • Topologic - Dr. Wassim Jabi (recording)
    • Homemaker - Bruno Postle (recording)
    • FreeCAD BIM Workbench - Rafael Moya Castro (recording)

Presentation outline

  • Hi - our goal
    • OSArch stands for Open Source in Architecture
    • people interested in using open source tools in the building industry
    • costs estimation, time scheduling, structural engineering and building physics
    • main focus is on promotiing the knowledge about the benefits of open source solutions
    • but the AEC industry is still dominated by proprietary software
      • the develop Open BIM capabilities mostly because they're forced to and always look for ways to lock people in their ecosystem
      • working together to make a better built environment.
    • in other areas OS is getting more and more attention
      • Apple joined Blender development fund few days ago
      • Microsoft bought github 2018 not to shut it down
      • creative industry like filmmaking, video games, digital painting offers many options
  • How we achieve that
    • Promotion
      • We actively search for software and promote it
      • We set up a website where we post news
      • We keep a calendar and we're also active on LinkedIn and twitter
    • Support
      • The core of our work can be seen on our wiki
      • The software directory is where we collect all the info about the software wy find useful
      • This is also where we present our workflows
      • and provide tutorials and documentation for projects notoriously lacking in this area
      • the busiest place is our forum
      • our members are also active in the academical sphere and one of our bigger projects is putting together a kind of a BIM with Open source curriculum, but this is still mor of a concept
      • what has however already become reality is the osarch.learn server
      • we have monthly meetups where our members present their projects and meet other developers
    • Developement
      • I said that we mainly promote open source, but the fact is many of our members prefer to do the developement
  • Our projects
    • ifcOpenShell - kind of where it started and what runs under the hood
    • ifc Toolbox - the frontend to ifcOpenshell
    • Topologic - researchers and developers joining the community
    • Homemaker - project connecting BlenderBIM and Topologic
    • Freecad - Providing the capability to do the Documentation of it all

Introduction (JanF)

"Hallo everyone! My name is Jan and today I'd like to tell you about about a group of people called OSArch. OSArch stands for Open Source in Architecture and it is basically a community of people interested in using open source tools in the building industry. But of course it's not only about architecture, we are actually dealing with pretty much all areas like costs estimation, time scheduling, structural engineering and building physics.

The spectrum of our activities is quite wide. I think our main focus is on spreading the knowledge about the benefits of open source solutions and also on improving them. So one big part of our activities is promoting less known solutions - we organize meetups where developers present their projects and connect with other members of our community and discuss possible cooperations. We also actively search for software fitting our vision, be it newly emerging work in progress, or older seemingly abandoned projects and try different ways to incorporate them into an open source workflow.

I think this focus on the workflow is also very central for many of our members. There are many who are practicing engineers and architects so the development is tightly connected to practical use - this is a massive benefit compared to the state of the largest corporate suites dominating the market, which seem to be largely ignoring their users, increasingly forcing them to look for alternatives.

We also try to provide support to newcommers testing out open source solutions, since the rapid pace of development combined with very limited resources causes notorically unpolished and undocumented user interfaces. Our community forum has about 1200 users and is usually capable of answering more or less satisfactory virtually any question you can think of, but for people who prefer more structured learning materials we set up a wiki and a learning server learn.osarch.org.

Some of our members are active in the academical sphere and one of our bigger projects is putting together a kind of a BIM with Open source curriculum, which could be taught all around the world. Using open source software for education has a massive benefit of freedom for students - they can keep on using the same tools professionaly when they finish their studies and don't find themselves suddenly unable to access their school projects when their educational licences of proprietary software expire."

BlenderBIM add-on (Moult)

Recording - BlenderBIM

IFC Toolbox (Yousheng)

Recording - IFC Toolbox

Topologic (topologic)

Recording - Topologic

Homemaker (brunopostle)

Recording - Homemaker

FreeCAD BIM Workbench (bitacovir)

Recording - Freecad (Bitacovir)

- FreeCAD short introduction about FreeCAD history, main developers and community (1 min)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RlJZ9B7omt3F9H6bYFDHnX5--95pCrfi/view?usp=sharing

- FreeCAD for Architecture workflow: 4 workbenches focused on Arch and BIM (2 min)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D2ex9AvrtX8gLuro2bXOODCSp3MYx-a9/view?usp=sharing

- FreeCAD for Architecture workflow: 2 cases of practical use and integration with other OS Software. (2 min)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g8ubvAbYxGFoDaCnw6I7EcGpi_GZ94s2/view?usp=sharing