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  • From: permage <Permage@ziplip.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Re: Computer-assisted PC designs
  • Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 13:58:06 -0700 (PDT)

I apologise for the vagueness of this post. Reading so widely, I lose track
of where I see things. I seem to recall a recent post somewhere regarding a
student of Mollison living on the east coast (?) of Australia. He had
developed a very successful PC design and property planning consultancy, with
a large number of clients. In the article about his business, reference was
made to a computer program which had been developed to significantly speed up
the PC design process. Information regarding a specific property was entered
in response to program prompts. Not sure if the results were also linked to
2D/3D CAD output.

I cannot recall any further detail and am not sure that any more was given.
It sounded interesting and I would have liked to have heard more about the
program. However, I assumed that it was probably mission-critical to the
business enterprise and thus probably unreasonable to expect him to be too
forthcoming about his systems approach to design.

This program sounded something similar to template-based design process being
discussed. I accept that PC solutions need to be tailor-made to specific
property parameters. However, it should be possible to augment the design
process through the use of computer resources.
This could be anything from an expanded version (with question prompts and
'go to...') of the planning checklist through to CAD outputs, solar transit
calendars etc.

For example, there were programs available which would take the input of
scanned contour line maps and automatically create a 3D screen model. The
model could then be 'flown' around (GIS style programming) and viewed from
different angles etc. Throw in some solar transits data, augment with some
keyline planning (using Fractal-based landscape mods like Terragen), morph in
vegetation changes..... you could develop a fairly dynamic computer model to
assist visualisation etc. I realise this is getting a bit 'geeky' and perhaps
impractical for many design applications. But still, the potential is there
for development of a range of PC computer-assisted products.

Just a thought....

Jemes




  • [permaculture] Re: Computer-assisted PC designs, permage, 06/13/2002

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