Dear friends and colleagues, I wish you and your loved ones a peaceful and joyous holiday season, a Merry Christmas, and a healthy, happy, and successful new year 2021! After the current year turned out a bit differently than everyone expected, there is certainly much hope and some certainty that next year will be better […] Read more..
I just updated three of my most popular SketchUp extensions: Scale By (Image/Attractors/Equation) Tools, Random Tools, and Unwrap and Flatten Faces. Beyond squashing a handful of bugs, these are the most important new features: Scale By (Image/Attractors/Equation) Tools now lets you transform objects by proximity to other objects (“attractors”). Not sure what this means? Check […] Read more..
This extension contains a set of tools to randomize various things in a SketchUp Model, such as: Object placement, rotation, scale, face extrusion, vertex locations, textures. Also allows to place objects randomly on faces or on edges (with scale, rotation, and orientation variations) and to swap objects randomly.
Joseph Kelly of MassConstruction.org visited our BCT program at UMass a few weeks ago for a tour of the Olver Design Building, our award-winning home at UMass. He also brought along his microphone and taped a two-part podcast with Peggi Clouston and me about the Design Building and the current wave of new MassTimber buildings. You […] Read more..
As anyone who follows our UMass social media feeds (@UMassBCT on Twitter and Facebook) knows, this fall we (the BCT program at UMass) organized an exhibit of some of our work under the title of “False Color”. This exhibit was up in the UMass Design Building since October 8 and will be taken down tomorrow, […] Read more..
UMass Press Release: Alexander Schreyer, director of the building and construction technology (BCT) program, has revised and expanded “Fundamentals of Residential Construction” to produce the fourth edition of the guide to professional construction of single-family and multifamily homes. Schreyer joins Edward Allen, formerly of MIT, Yale University and the University of Oregon, and Robert Thallon […] Read more..
Being about a month away from moving my office into a Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) building, I am of course interested in answers to this question. As it turns out, many recent research projects proved that CLT can evidently handle quite a bit of abuse (beyond regular day-to-day loading and use)! I may be biased, but […] Read more..