Abstract

This proposal addresses four student computing needs in the studios and departmental labs of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. (Please note that the name of the College will change to "College of Built Environments" effective 1/1/09.)

First, we seek to replace old Windows computers and two old printers in the College's design studios and departmental labs. The computers were purchased in 2005, and are no longer able to effectively run current versions of the discipline-specific CAD, modeling, GIS, analysis, and graphics software that our students use. The printers were purchased in the late 1990's and are worn out.

Second, we seek to upgrade several essential software packages commonly used by all CAUP students. Since we have a license-metering system for our software, we can purchase relatively few licenses, but can make these packages available to all students working in the College's student labs, studios, or with the CAUP Student Equipment Loaner Program laptops (which CAUP students can borrow from the Architecture & Urban Planning Library), in addition to being available remotely via the College's student application server cluster.

Third, we seek to replace an old Macintosh in the College's Photo Lab. This machine, purchased in 2001, is no longer able to run reasonably recent versions of scanning and image processing software used by students in the lab.

Fourth, we seek to replace two failing projectors available for loan to students through the CAUP Student Equipment Loaner Program.

Background

[from 2006]

In 2001, the STF supported our efforts to rectify critical long-standing access, consistency, and performance problems in the student computing environment in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. This support, along with substantial local contributions, provided students with reasonable hardware and a consistent, capable software base. As a result, students were finally able to spend their time at the computer actually doing useful work rather than fighting with recalcitrant, patched-together systems.

In subsequent years, further support from the STF and from the College has allowed us to provide improved computing resources for students from CAUP and from elsewhere on campus, and to pursue initiatives to enhance students' computing experience here.

These successes have inspired the College and University to allocate resources to build and furnish the CAUP Digital Commons, a central facility in Gould Hall that contains a large, flexible space with drop-in projection/presentation centers, pervasive wireless, a new lab with much better AV and acoustics than the lab it replaced, and many other improvements. The CAUP Digital Commons opened at the beginning of this academic year.

With the vital help of the STF, the good we've been able to do here is obvious, pervasive, and ongoing. We now seek to maintain and extend this.

To maintain the student computing environment in CAUP, we need to replace our oldest systems, and to upgrade our major CAD, graphics, web design, statistics, and other software packages. To extend it, we seek to add graphics tablets in the Commons lab to allow students to take greater advantage of the current convergence of sketching and design software.

[from 2008]

CAUP's Digital Commons facility is the center of student computing activity in the College, providing high-performance machines capable of running our most complex discipline-specific software, along with peripheral equipment (e.g. plotters) essential to our disciplines.

Thanks to ongoing support from the Student Technology Fee Committee, we have been able to maintain the usefulness of this facility, replacing computers and other equipment as it reaches end-of-life, and upgrading software to provide students with the best possible computing environment.

Currently, the lab's Mac desktops (purchased in 2004) and roughly half of the Windows desktops (purchased in 2002 and 2004) can no longer effectively run current versions of the software our students need to use. We therefore seek to replace these machines.

We also need to upgrade our major CAD, Building Information Modeling, and 3D software packages, so that students can develop facility with the latest tools in the rapidly-changing field of AEC (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) software.

In addition to the CAUP Digital Commons, the college supports computing stations in the design studios. While not as high-performance or extensive as the resources available in the Digital Commons, the studio computing stations address students' need for quickly-accessible scanning of drawings, touching up graphics, checking building codes and GIS data, etc. while working in the studio.

Letter-size scanners were purchased for the studios in 2004 to support this work. However, these scanners are now long out of warranty, and most are breaking down from heavy use. Many students have suggested that at least some replacement scanners be capable of scanning tabloid-size (11x17) documents, since drawings and images are often larger than the 8.5x11 capacity of the current scanners.

Since tabloid scanners are significantly more expensive than letter-size scanners, we don't propose to replace all the studio scanners with tabloid units. Rather, we would like to replace the studios' letter-size scanners with a mix of letter-size and tabloid-size scanners, such that every studio would have a scanner, and that a tabloid scanner would be easily accessible to every student working in a studio - although it might be in a nearby studio to which they have 24/7 access. Additionally, students have requested a tabloid scanner in the Architecture & Urban Planning Library (Gould 334), so that they may scan larger documents that are library-use-only.

Since easy scanning of printed images and drawings is a vital activity in our graphically-oriented disciplines, providing working, capable scanners for our students is very important.

[from 2009]

The studio experience forms the foundation of student work in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. In the studio, students learn to develop their design, management, and planning ideas, and to express and refine these ideas in energetic discussions with their colleagues.

One factor contributing to the success of the studio experience is ready access to networked computers - to present design ideas, illustrate construction challenges, check online references, scan documents, import images or video, burn media. Since not all students are able to bring their own computers to their studio, and since it's extremely useful to have a computer always available to provide such functions, the College has provided each studio with one to six Windows computers, (the number depending upon the number of students in the studio and the intensity of each studio's computer use).

In 2005, with substantial support from the STF, we were able to provide consistent, reliable Windows computers in the College's 20 studios and departmental labs (which are functionally analogous to studios). These machines are now nearly four years old, are too slow to provide reasonable performance with current versions of the discipline-specific software that our students use, and are beginning to fail beyond reasonable repair. Additionally, two printers located in studios far from shared printing facilities are each about ten years old, and are at the end of their useful lives.

Over 400 students work in CAUP studios each quarter, so access to reasonable machines in the studio is an important issue for a majority of students in the College. We therefore propose to replace the obsolete computers in the studios with capable new machines, and to replace these two defunct printers.

We also propose to upgrade several important software packages that are in constant use by students in the College. Discipline-specific software in design, construction, and planning is currently in a period of rapid change, as earlier usage and development paradigms derived from drawing/drafting (2D) and modeling (3D) are being augmented by considerations of time (4D) and cost (5D) and by the realization that representing projects in the built environment as data structures (BIM - Building Information Modeling) affords opportunities for more efficient collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. Therefore, it's quite important for our students to have access to current versions of key software used in our disciplines.

In a related effort, we propose to replace a very old Macintosh used for scanning and image processing tasks in the College's Photo Lab. This machine was purchased with STF funds in 2001, and is used by students for scanning and image processing when working in this student lab. The replacement computer would participate in the same network licensing arrangements used by other student labs and studios in the College, so would need no application software.

Finally, we propose to replace unreliable and failing projectors in the CAUP Student Equipment Loaner Program equipment pool. In 2000, with support from the STF, the College and the Architecture and Urban Planning Library developed the CAUP Student Equipment Loaner Program, which provides laptops, projectors, graphics tablets, cameras, camcorders, and similar items for loan to CAUP students from the AUP Library in Gould Hall. The projectors that were purchased in 2000 to support this effort are now over eight years old, and are failing.

Since so much of students' work in the College is based on discussions and presentations involving sophisticated graphics - drawings, models, renderings, walkthroughs - the importance of providing students with easy access to high quality projectors cannot be overstated. The College has outfitted nearly all College-controlled classrooms with high quality projectors, which partly meets the need, but presentations and design reviews also happen in studios, found spaces, and public meetings. To more fully address this need, we propose the purchase of two portable projectors that are optimized for graphics presentation, to replace the two failing projectors in our student loaner pool.

Benefits

1. Digital Commons Lab and Stick Studio computer replacements

Replacing the oldest computers in the Digital Commons student lab would maintain the facility's usefulness to students by providing the capable machines they need to run today's most complex discipline-specific software. The machines we need to replace, purchased in 2006, really cannot effectively run current versions of the software that our students need to use. This situation will only worsen over time, as we try to meet student needs by deploying current versions of discipline-specific software.

Replacing the pre-Intel Macs in the Stick Studio is simply necessary at this point. Current versions of much of the modeling software used by students in this studio will not run on pre-Intel Macs, rendering these machines useless to students working in the studio.

2. Software upgrades

The design, construction, and planning professions use a wide variety of software packages. Many of these packages are quite expensive for students to purchase on their own, but students in our disciplines need to develop facility with most of them to be successful as they move into the professions for which they’re preparing themselves.

To address this need, we try to provide access to the most effective and widely used packages in the design, construction, and planning communities. For many years, we have been doing this less expensively by taking advantage of network-based licensing options offered by the various software vendors. This has allowed us to buy relatively small numbers of licenses, but to provide the network-licensed software on all student lab / studio machines in the College, as well as on the laptops in the College’s library loaner program and to students working remotely via the College's student application server cluster.

All 700 CBE students, as well as non-CBE students who make use of our facilities, would benefit from these upgrades.

Application-specific software details:

a. Autodesk suite (Autodesk Architecture / AutoCAD, Revit, etc.)

Autodesk Architecture / AutoCAD is the primary CAD application in the design, construction, and planning industries. It is used by a large majority of firms, so facility with it is essential to students preparing for these professions. It is in widespread use here, where we participate in a campus-wide subscription program that allows installation of nearly all Autodesk applications in our student labs, studios, application server cluster, and loaner laptops.

Revit is Autodesk's Building Information Modeling application. BIM represents an evolution beyond the manual drafting-based paradigm that forms the conceptual basis of most current CAD applications. This new paradigm is graphically based on parametric modeling, and conceptually based on the notion of building-as-information. These paradigm shifts allow students to develop their designs in an inherently 3D environment, where the elements have associated information (metadata) and can interact with each other.

Design, planning, and management systems based on BIM concepts provide an extraordinarily rich way to develop and communicate information in our disciplines, substantially reducing the communication errors and resulting waste that has typified much design/construction practice. Thus, they are rapidly being adopted by firms and government agencies concerned with the built environment, and are important for our students to master.

We would like to renew our participation in the UW's Autodesk subscription program, including Revit (which would be part of that renewal). This would cover all computers running Windows in the student labs and studios, the College's student application server cluster, and laptops in the student equipment loaner program run from the BE Library in Gould Hall.

b. Bentley Microstation

Bentley Microstation is a widely-used 3D CAD/visualization/BIM package. While it addresses a problem space similar to that addressed by other CAD programs (AutoCAD, for example), it uses a different conceptual model (derived from 3D and modeling, rather than 2D and drafting, and incorporating a modular data model - a different approach to building data organization with which students need to be familiar).

A feature of our license for Microstation is that we are able to provide standalone licenses to students for installation on their personally-owned computers. The term of these licenses corresponds to that of the College's concurrent license for the student labs, studios, library loaner machines, and student application server cluster.

Since Microstation implements a distinctly different approach to the challenges of design, construction, and planning, and since the Microstation suite includes a large collection of toolkits specific to sub-specialties in our industries, the opportunity to develop facility with it is quite useful to our students. Having more varied conceptual and practical tools available to address the issues in our disciplines puts our students in a better position as they move into the professions.

We propose to renew our annual license for the Microstation suite (31 concurrent licenses), which will support deployment of Microstation on all CBE studio and lab machines, and on the CBE student loaner laptops and student application server cluster, in addition to allowing us to distribute the package to CBE students for installation on their personal machines.

c. AutoDesSys formZ

FormZ is a 3D modeling, rendering, and animation package prevalent in Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Used in conjunction with CAD and graphics applications, it is an integral tool in the design process for CBE students.

We propose to renew our annual license for this package (35 concurrent licenses), which would cover all student lab, studio, and student equipment loaner program laptops, as well as the student application server cluster.

d. PASW Statistics (formerly SPSS)

We currently have SPSS 14 deployed on student-access machines throughout the College. This version, purchased several years ago, is four versions behind. Students have requested an upgrade to the current version, so they may more easily collaborate with research groups and others outside the College. (After IBM's purchase of SPSS Inc., the name of the software was changed to PASW (Predictive Analytics Software) Statistics.)

We propose to upgrade our 35 concurrent seats (seven 5-packs) to PASW Statistics 18.

Student Access

The Digital Commons is an open-access computing facility available for student use 24 hours a day, and is open all year. The computers are intended for use by CBE students but are accessible to the entire UW community during normal business hours.

Students enrolled in the Stick Studio have 24/7 access to the studio, so would have 24/7 access to the new computers. Each year, over XYZ students work in the Stick Studio.

Networked printers and plotters are available to students at all times at all workstations. Students can collect plots from the centrally located plotting station in the Digital Commons during scheduled business hours, and can collect printouts from a laser printer station in the Commons (B&W and color, up to tabloid size) any time. Courses are taught year round that require students to use the labs – these courses attract students from all over the University.

The College's student application server cluster is available to all CBE students anytime over the Internet.

In addition to these fixed resources, all students enrolled in CBE degree programs have access to laptops and other equipment available for loan through the CBE Student Equipment Loaner Program. Open hours for borrowing are determined by the operations of the Built Environments Library, although equipment out on loan is of course available to the borrower on a 24-hour basis.

Available Resources

Ongoing maintenance, operations, and support costs associated with the facilities affected by this proposal would be covered by the CBE Computing operations budget. This budget is sufficient to cover ongoing costs associated with this proposal.

Student computing in CBE is directly supported by 2 FTE of technical staff members plus approximately 2 FTE of student help desk staff. Other College technical staff members are available to provide additional and/or specialized support as needed.

Existing computing resources are concentrated in the Digital Commons in Gould Hall, the Archnet I/O Center in Architecture Hall, in design studios and departmental labs throughout Gould and Architecture Halls and satellite facilities, and in the CBE Student Equipment Loaner Program.

Installation Timeline

The computers would be ordered as soon as funds became available, and would be processed and deployed immediately upon arrival. Most software would be ordered in the summer of 2010, and would be deployed during the interim between Summer and Autumn quarters. Orders for software license program renewals would be placed as they come due in July 2010 and January 2011.

Items

Below are the items making up the current proposal. The asterisk (*) beside items signify that they were approved by the committee. This however was not implemented correctly for our database before 2005, so earlier years may not show this.

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