Hi Author,
Ill check the poll. There are many conferences where OCC can fit.
Although it may sound strange, Architects(as in brick and mortar) have been interested in the intersection between computation and fabrication, and how we bridge design and manufacturing. since they now have more access to styling features in design authoring packages (Nurbs, subdivision surfaces), but they are having a hard time translating those designs into constructible designs that can be "described" using either traditional documentation "projective geometry" or more Numerically Controlled Machining processes. this field is being termed "Architectural Geometry" or "Rationalization" and there are many opportunities for anyone with experience in OCC to contribute to this field.
I met Jelle Feringa for example during one of the ecaade conferences, and it was a great opportunity to catch-up.
Where it becomes more useful is if anyone here has Mathematical Knowledge so that they can encode their knowledge as mathematical notations so that it is not just a technological description but also a mixture of theory, for example much of the theory behind BREP has somehow been buried in the midst of Geometry Kernels, but in fact this knowledge could potentially solve many problems related to how we analyze geometry for fabrication, for example a really useful command like splitting a surface by using Gaussian curvature as the criteria could help architects reduce cost of double curved surfaces by translating higher curvature components into lower curvature ones, since cost of manufacturing normally decreases as you go from highly curved,double curved, single curved, and then flat, in that order, Many tools even advanced ones like(CATIA) dont have these features built-in, you have to develop plugins using CAA or VBA, so there is still keen interest in the industry to solve these "Problem-Solving" problems which have only recently emerged with the adoption of Nurbs packages like Rhino/CATIA/Alias or even with the appropriation of Animation Packages like Maya/3ds Max/XSI/Houdini/MudBox.
So I welcome anyone who is not in the AEC industry and has advanced knowledge of Geometry at the analytically level and BREP level to contribute to these conferences and Debates occurring around how architects are reinventing they way they translate designs into fabrication, Frank Gehry started the debate in the 1990s when he adopted CATIA for the fabrication of the Barcelona Fish and subsequently the Guggenheim in Bilbao , 23 years later the industry is finally catching up, but the same problems he was facing with translating his design intentions into fabrication intentions are re-emerging as other architects who did not have access to these tools now have access to low cost tools that enable them to design complex surfaces.
We are struggling with encoding material behavior in the models, for example OCC's fair-curves and Batten-curves are great examples of tools that could be used to simulate how wood bends in lofting, trick is new materials emerge very quickly and architects sometimes need to encode the behavior of these materials into the models, so the models have to be not only representations of form and shape but increasingly representations of the behavior in materials, so that they reduce the uncertainties of matching the design intention with how the assembly is going to perform once built on site(rework increases cost and litigation).
If you come from the Aerospace and Shipbuilding industries this is your bread and butter, and architects are Hungry for this kind of knowledge and expertise, since buildings are becoming ever more expressive and complex.
here is a list of conferences where you could contribute:
Industry Based(where people show software with possible applications and sometimes how their software was used on a complex project):
there is this new conference in Paris started by Prof. Helmut Pottman, http://aag12.architecturalgeometry.at/ Advances in Architectural Geometry, it happened last year in Paris.
also https://www.design-modelling-symposium.de/ digital design modelling in Berlin.
Research Based(Application is not necessarily the imperative):
these conferences have been meeting for more than 20 years around the topic of Computers in Architectural Research.
-ACADIA: http://acadia.org/conferences
-CAADRIA:http://www.caadria2013.org/
-CAAD FUTURES: http://cf2013.tongji-caup.org/
-ECAADE:http://www.ecaade.org/
Hope to see any of you on these conferences.
Best,
Alex
