The Charette Project has been an ongoing investigation into the uses of information technology in the architectural field. It started with the development of a prototype of an portable electronic architectural sketchbook. Research continues today along a number of directions:
Making a DVD with Pinnacle Studio 8
I just finished making a 30-minute DVD of Alexander in 2003 for holiday presents to give to my family. The DVD had a combination of still pictures and video. Here is what I learned in the process.
Michael S. Scherotter 12/28/2003
Semantic Web Experiment
I have started experimenting with creating a Semantic Web schema for connecting people through their interpersonal relationships called the Charette Relationship Set. Tell me what you think.
Michael S. Scherotter 12/27/2003
Mindjet Announces MindManager X5 Pro
If you have been wondering what I have been doing for the past nine months, I started in January as the software development manager at Mindjet LLC in Larkspur, California. At Mindjet, I have been leading a team of hard-working software architects and engineers to develop MindManager X5 Pro, which will be released on October 8, 2003. Take a look at the free demo and I am sure that you will be amazed!
Michael S. Scherotter 9/17/2003
Dealing with Spam
Earlier this year I filed my taxes using H&R Block's TaxCut Software. To receieve notification that my taxes were submitted, I had to give an email address. Since then, that email address, a one-time use address, has been the target of spam, unsolicited commercial email. Read my responseto H&R Block to see how I dealt with the fact that they sold the email address to spammers.
Michael S. Scherotter 8/16/2003
Lego Engineering: Battle Track at Brookside Upper School
I just finished teaching a weekly
after-school
engineering coursefor children at Brookside
Upper and Lower Elementary Schools in San Anselmo,
California. The last day of class, we did
Battle Track, a contest where the young
engineers build vehicles to battle others in
head-to-head combat. Take a look at the video from
the afternoons at Brookside Upper:
Windows Media 9.75 MB and Brookside Lower:
Windows Media 6.34 MB.
Michael S. Scherotter 2/16/2003
A Dynamically Generated Sketchbook
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I have started experimenting with creating a way to share my sketchbooks that I have been filling for the past sixteen years. I have always thought that hypertext through HTML would be a great medium to arrange and combine the multiple media streams that I enjoy creating, including sketching, painting, photography, video, audio, journalling, writing, and hyperlinking. To that end I have started designing an XML schema which defines a journal entry. |
Michael S. Scherotter 2.5.2003
2002 for Charette.com
In April of 2002, when I moved Charette.com's web host to WebIntellects, I started collecting hit statistics on how often Charette.com gets viewed. Here are the results:
Michael S. Scherotter 1.1.2003
A New Step in My Career
After eight years at Tartus, Inc.in roles from software developer to project manager to lead software architect, I am taking a new step in my career and joining Mindjet as a project manager. At Tartus, I worked with a great group of people developing software for building product manufacturers and I am sad to leave them.
If you don't know what Mindjet does, they build brainstorming and visual thinking software. What's so exciting for me is that the type of diagrams that Mindjet's MindManager helps people create are mind maps, a type of diagram that I already use to take notes and map out ideas. Here are the notes from a talk on predators given by Mama Simba (Jeannette Hanby) while I was on Safari in Tanzania:
A mind map of Mama Simba's talk about Predators
Michael S. Scherotter 12.21.2002
A Marin C++ Users Group
In my quest to continue my education and advancement in software development, I have started a Marin C++ User Group on Yahoo. I would like to find other like-minded software architects, developers and programmers in the Marin County, California area who want to expand their knowledge and understanding of how to effectively use and apply this language. On that topic, I put together a list of resources for those who are learning C++. If you are interested in joining the user group or just giving me some feedback, please go to the group's site.
Michael S. Scherotter 11.18.2002
A Culinary Diversion
While I am teaching children engineering with Lego, my brother Daniel, a chef in San Francisco, is teaching children about taste.
Michael S. Scherotter 11.1.2002
After-School Lego Engineering
I have started to do something very rewarding: One day a week, I am helping out with an after-school Lego Engineering class for 6-11 year-olds. We are using Lego to teach children about structural and mechanical engineering. Each day we show how to build a device out of Lego that demonstrates a engineering principle. We have helped the children build belt and pulley cars, corbeled arch bridges, walking robots, and through each lesson they are learning about concepts like gear ratios, cantilever, and center of gravity. The kids love it! I do too.
Michael S. Scherotter 10.14.2002
How do you use PocketCAD?
A college of mine, Matt Prince, sent me a link to
PocketCAD, a CAD tool for the Pocket PC
Platform. Do you use this software? If so, how do
you use it? What are the product's deficiencies?
Email me at
or post your review in my
Guest Book.
Michael S. Scherotter 9.29.2002
Asking questions about Digital Design Tools
I posted these question on the alt.architecture newsgroup:
As architects, what kind of digital design tool
would you buy?
What crucial functionality is not addressed in the
current design tools
like Autodesk Architectural Studio, AutoCAD, and
other CAD tools?
Michael S. Scherotter 9.19.2002
Corel® Grafigo™ Announced
Yesterday, Corel
announced Grafigo™ at the Seybold SF 2002
Conference. I would love to post a review of this
software as soon as possible because of my
interest in the idea for a digital sketchbook. If
anyone who has seen this software would like post
a review, email me at
or post a review in my
Guest Book.
Michael S. Scherotter 9.11.2002
Lawrence Lessig Knows His Stuff!
I just listened to a speech by Lawrence Lessig entitled <free culture> where he makes a very persuasive argument about your rights in a digital age, and how those right are being eroded. You may ask what this has to do with architecture and technology. Well, creativity and innovation can be stifled by stupid laws like the DMCA. What if, in order to enter a building, you had to sign (or click) a license agreement stating that you could not copy or the architecture in any way, write about the building, or make a model of it without the written permission of the owner? What effect would that have on architecture, which, for thousands of years, has evolved because of copying?
Michael S. Scherotter 8.14.2002
The n_Gen Design Machine
Take a look at Move Design's n_Gen Design Machine. The machine assists designers in laying out graphics. What if we could design a tool that would assist architects in laying out buildings? Designers play with shapes and forms. Many times the best designs evolve as a result of this play. n_Gen takes specific pieces of input text and applies a transform to it with a little randomness. A computer is perfect for these types of manipulations. What kinds of transformations would an architect use?
Michael S. Scherotter 4.11.2002
Is There a Need for a
SketchTablet?
If there were a tool that was the size and form of a sketchbook with the power of a computer would you buy one? That is the fundamental question that I have been asking for more than eight years. In architecture school, I realized that the digital tools available for designing buildings lacked much of the simplicity and flexibility of a common architectural sketchbook. Because of a convergence of hardware and software technologies, I am looking into finally building such a tool and I need to know what would be essential for its success. Autodesk currently has a product called Architectural Studio which looks it might be such a tool. If anyone tried out Architectural Studio, I would appreciate your feedback.
I would like to build a digital sketchbook for visual professionals like architects, graphic designers, artists, and engineers. The main interface for such a tool would be an electronic pen directly on a the screen of the tablet. All of the device's functions would be geared towards pen input. The tablet would have wireless internet access to enable sharing of sketches in a collaborative environment. What would you want on your SketchTablet?
Michael S. Scherotter 8.1.2001
Technology and Quality of Life
For years technologists have been saying that certain advancements will make our lives easier. For many people, this promise has not materialized, but it has for me.
Four years ago, my father was fighting a battle with cancer. He was living in Palm Springs, and I was living an eight hour drive away in San Francisco. Because of his health, he had to stop working and, because of his medications, was unable to drive. When I told my supervisor about this, he told me to get my notebook computer and go down to Palm Springs to help my father. While I was down there, I was able to take my father to doctors' appointments, take him to see friends, and take care of him. I was able to use my notebook computer to work at my parent's home as well as in the waiting rooms of doctors' offices. During the day I was able to help him, and in the evenings, I was able to work from my notebook computer, keeping in touch via telephone and email. It was really possible to reorganize my work life to accommodate my personal life. In this way, technology actually made my life easier in three ways:
- I had a notebook computer which had everything on it to be able to work productively.
- A career, software development, that made it possible to work from a notebook computer.
- A supervisor who trusted me to work for an extended period away from the office.
Though my father eventually lost his battle with cancer, I was able to significantly help out my family and make this tough time a little more bearable without taking a break from my career. Technology really improved my quality of life.
Michael S. Scherotter 8.18.2001
Architecture and Information Technology:
Architects will not be able to fully take advantage of real cost benefits of using CAD until there is a digital building model, or Building Information Model (BIM). Though computers have replaced drafting boards in most architectural offices today, they are, for the most part, being used to create drawings and not buildings. In the United States, the architect's contract is based on drawings and specifications: therefore all design intent must be expressed in drawings and specifications. The automotive and aerospace industries have realized long ago that representing a complex three-dimensional system in two dimensions to be built ultimately in three dimensions is a inexact method. The two dimensional representation is still only an abstraction and only works when cross-referenced with specifications. The drawing is essentially, lines and circles and text: geometry. It is the arrangement of this geometry which gives it meaning. But the problem is that this meaning has to be divined by a human. Only a human can reliably interpret the meaning in a drawing: that a line means a wall edge and not a fascia. Today architects use computers to create these drawing and, through reuse, has allowed many architects to cut costs. But they still have to create drawings.
The problem with this is that as a building becomes more complex, the ability to check interferences between subsystems becomes more complex. This means that figuring out what is affected when a wall moves becomes a monumental task in a simple building: electrical, structural, mechanical, plumbing, and interior design are all affected. When I tell my friends who use word processing applications with spell checking daily that there is no automated way of checking any of the systems in a building they are astounded. Yes, there are software tools for doing different types of analysis on building models, but most of them require the user to re-input all of the data into them, increasing the potential for errors. Because there is no agreed-upon standard for a digital building model, there cannot be a standard protocol by which analysis tools can be run. The digital building model must have these three characteristics:
- The building model must be extensible: it must account for building materials and methods not yet developed
- The building model must be non-proprietary: it cannot simply be one CAD vendor's file format; because this model must be the basis of a contract, it's content cannot be controlled by an entity not party to the contract.
- The building mode must be unambiguous: it is not made up of lines and text, but models of actual building components like walls, windows, and floors.
When we have such a building model, we will be able to do many things: write software tools which analyze the model for specific characteristics: like ADA accessibility, energy efficiency, life-cycle costs, structural integrity and building costs. Design tools for specific product types like wall systems, doors, and floor systems can prevent many of the errors in design when the architect does not know enough about a particularly building system. This can remove many of the inefficiencies in the shop drawing approval process are removed because all ambiguity is removed from the building model.
The aerospace and automotive industries have accomplished this goal by adopting a primary contractor model, where the prime contractor is also the designer of the product. In these industries the non-proprietary condition is unnecessary because a prime contractor can specify a specific vendor's CAD tool and all subcontractors must use that same system. This is comparable to the practice in architecture called Design/Build.
There are some interesting developments in the direction of creating the building model, one is aecXMLand the other is BLIS. There are many aspects of the building process today which are benefiting greatly from the usage of CAD, one of them being the creation of shop drawings. For eight years in my career, I worked for Tartus, Inc., building software for building product manufacturers like Boise Cascade and Simpson Strong Tie. With my education in architecture and my background in computer software, I was able to communicate with the product manufacutrers in the language of architecture and building. Using object-oriented design, and long-term, large-scale software development practices, at Tartus, we were able to offer a software development services to the building industry where they can be used most effectively.
For the past year, I have been working for Mindjet. At first, I managed the development team in the building of MindManager X5, and then I moved to a newly formed Business Solutions Group, where as a Solution Architect, I have been working to find innovative uses of MindManager X5. MindManager X5 has always been a very strong product for brainstorming and project planning, and at Mindjet, we always said that almost every task could be considered a project. From my background in design tool development, I would say that MindManager X5 is a design tool, but for non-designers. I define a design tool as a tool that assists in a creative process. Because MindManager supports a visual process that can be iterative, structured, and unstructured, many non-designers are using it and introducing design methodology into their everyday lives. Because it can use XML to integrate with other software systems, I could envision that one day MindManager could be an interface into an XML-based Building Information Model. That would be cool!
Michael S. Scherotter 6/15/2001-4/8/2004
My story:
Since a young age I was always good with computers. I spent many years of my adolescence tinkering on a personal computer: first TRS-80s at school, and then an IBM PCjrat home. It was a logical progression from building cities with Legoblocks to building programs in BASIC on a computer. At the time, no one understood what I was doing, and I had a difficult time explaining it to my family.
When I was in high school, I kept my interest in computers but also developed an interest in architecture and design. I attended the Career Discoveryprogram at Harvard's Graduate School of Designand found that I would love architecture school. Based on that experience, I enrolled in the College of Architecture at the University of Arizona. I did well academically, always keeping in tune with computer technology by working as computer lab monitor and as a computer salesperson at the university bookstore. I loveddesign. I designed everything from airports to houses to chairs to transportation systems. Each summer while I was at Arizona, I worked for Donald Wexler, AIA, first as an office assistant and later as a junior draftsman. I was able to see first-hand how an architecture office worked. The only computers in that office were used for word processing. As school, I used the computers available to me as tools to help with my tasks but I found then hopelessly rigid and underpowered to replace my simple sketchbook.
When it came time to select a topic for my thesis project, I decided to build Charette a prototype for a pen-based portable architectural design tool based on the architect's sketchbook. The idea was to take the flexibility and informality of a sketchbook and combine it with a computer. Using tools like Fractal Design Sketcherand AutoCADon a GRiD Convertible computer, I was able to demonstrate a vision of a portable design tool for architects. In my final year of architecture school, I saw two things: there were better building designers in my class than me and that I was better at computers than anyone else in my class. My mentor and thesis professor, Charles Albanese, AIA gave me this wonderful piece of advice: find what you're good at and what you like and become the best at that. From that advice, I decided to go to graduate school to combine my aptitude for computers with my love of architecture.
I found the perfect program: UCLA's School of Arts & Architecturehad a Master's of Architecture program specializing in Computer Aided Design Tool Development. I was accepted to the program and under the guidance of Charles Eastman, Robin Ligget, George Stiny, and Murray Milne, I learned about CAD Software Development. I learned the basics of C and C++ programming as well as how to use programs like WaveFront, SGI Performer, AutoCAD, and Photoshop in the context of architectural design. While at UCLA, I was employed in a work-study program at the UCLA Medical Center Computing Services as a network technician. The CTO of the Medical Center, Dr. Mike McCoy was interested in my research with pen computers from Arizona and I was able to work with him investigating the use of a pen computer as a digital patient record tool for medical professionals. For my graduate thesis project I built a CAD tool for constructing quadrilateral meshes for curtain wall design based on OpenGL and MFC.
Having received my Masters of Architecture Degree, I found a job with Tartus Development, Inc., a consulting firm in San Rafael, California which specializes in building CAD software for the A/E/C industry. I have been with Tartus since January 1995 and have grown to the role of Lead Software Architect. I have worked on various projects, but my main focus has been developing BC Framerfor Boise Cascade Corp., a tool for automating the production of working drawings for floor and roof framing. Throughout my time at Tartus Development, I have investigated and used many technologies including MFC, the Standard C++ Library, OpenGL, Open Inventor, Ricoh DesignBase, AutoCAD, OLE for Design and Modeling, Microsoft XSG, XML, XSLT, BeOS, and Microsoft .Net.
In January of 2003, I started at Mindjet LLC in Larkspur, California as the Software Development Manager, leading a team of software professionals to develop MindManager 2002 for Tablet PC, released in April 2003 and MindManager X5 Pro, released in October 2003. I have now moved to the new Business Solutions Group at Mindjet, where I will be working to design and develop new and innovative uses of MindManager X5 Pro.
Michael S. Scherotter 10/18/2003
7/19/2005