CAD, BIM, GIS and other tricks of the computer science in the education of the Building Engineer

Revisione internazionale- relazione a invito- chair sessione S8T The paper aims to develop some thoughts on the upgrade implemented in the disciplines of drawing from the latest forms of digital representation, commenting on the experiences under way in some university courses included in the learning curriculum provided to engineering students with regard to the course of study in Ingegneria Edile (Building Engineering, also known as Architectural or Construction Engineering) at the Politecnico di Torino. It’s a matter of reasoning on what and how to suggest knowledge and practises in the experience of teaching that result as an improvement of skills and abilities appropriate for future commitments required by the job world. Method: Methodological reasons, subject contents and experiences positively carried out during the activities of the course of Representation Techniques and Data Management (in the post graduate “Laurea Magistrale”) are treated, focusing on all the resources needed to conduct profitable operations training and first clarifying the specific skills and experience required for the teaching staff, essential qualities to ensure good results: all the activities organized to achieve the training objectives are based on the belief that early training is needed to trigger virtuous review processes for engineering practice and that opportunities to practice through simulations in the academic curriculum for future engineers can produce effects of greater permanence and enable an enhancement of learning outcomes. Result: The analysis, which is addressed primarily to illustrate the result of some of the outcomes of exercise activities leaded by students, brings attention to a solicitation that seems to be constraining and that concerns the system of relations required between operators of the design and construction process, which are requested to enter into shared aims while operating in the specificity of the various technical fields; in this sense, the tricks of the CAD, which is at the service of a geometric knowledge, measured and fulfilled by its attributes, the attention demanded by BIM, which builds a widespread and open network of relationship, the cunnings of the GIS, which has to gather dynamic information and alternative choices, appear to address areas of operational testing following a single purpose directed towards a better characterization of the process of conceptual development and a more advantageous control of the working method. Discussion & Conclusion: So, with the design and over the usual representations, we speak of computer tricks to say that to be understood as the necessary infrastructure to solicit and investigate the reasons of doing and how to solve the complexity of operating on the field, upon which students must impractical themselves to identify qualities and limits, whether they are exploring the reasons of the survey or the reasons bound with the design; certainly a renewal for the most usual ways of designing useful to produce different levels of knowledge and a new shared place for the exchange and discussion of the hypotheses, with what results?