Last summer, after 3 months of investigative interviewing with multiple acoustical software developers, BCIT Acoustics Lab decided to invest in Odeon, an industry-standard building acoustic modeling software developed at the Technical University of Denmark. If you’re a BCIT student interested in modeling room acoustic— i.e. checking how your architectural designs will hold up on the acoustics side of things, you might have a go at Odeon.
I decided to use this software for various parts of my thesis. Although it cannot cover for my full model (15% of it, maybe 30% max), I still want to invest a good chunk of time to learn it, if not just to be worthy of my status as acoustics grad student. Apparently, Odeon for acoustics students is akin to AutoCad/Revit for architectural students.
It is customary to import 3D models from other CAD programs into Odeon. A few hours in Odeon’s model-making program proved more excruciating than days in Revit. So I’ll need to learn a CAD program to make the 3D models to feed into Odeon for acoustical investigation.
Well, this is just perfect. All things I (desperately) lack must be made up in full this term. I mentioned that I’d forgotten all my college math. I’d forgotten all my Autocad and 3DStudioMax too. Adding CAD to my increasingly unmanageable list of “Steep Learning Curves To Climb by Myself”, I now have the following:
- math: calculus, vector and matrix algebra, Fourier analysis, boundary element method
- acoustics: acoustical wave theory, sound behavior in wave guides, and other acoustical models I need that run on over pages and books
- CAD: Revit and Sketchup
- acoustical software: Odeon, AFMG Soundflow
- calculations & programming environments: MATlab, Simulink (& maybe Labview)
Pardon the colic-beginner’s pain I’m experiencing here, but I have no idea how I will ever be able to do any of these, from scratch, let alone complete all of them on time. Things are looking pretty bleak to this noob (ME!) right now.
So I start with the easiest things first.
AFMG Soundflow, which predicts the Sound Transmission Class through one cross section of a wall assembly or multilayer element, is relatively easy to use. But easiest does NOT mean easy. It still puts up a wrestle sometimes, but at least I can begin to nibble at it.
Next easiest, CAD. Much of my January was sacrificed on the altar of Autodesk Revit. It feels oddly nostalgic to be doing something so… architecture-y again. It reminds me of how much I hated converting units and fussing over joinery corners and the dimensions of bathrooms and stairs. Revit is also giving me a bitter time with roofs, especially complex ones that our laneway house designers seem to fancy. Once I have some house models, I pop them into Odeon. Then begins the ping-pong of these building models between Odeon and Revit.
Odeon loves to vomit up my Revit models (well, not literally), so I have to fix them back in Revit and feed it again to Odeon. I watch and re-watch tutorials. I troubleshoot not knowing what I am looking for. This is the type of mud I wallow in these days.
So far, Odeon has been highly-recondite and painful to learn (especially without an instructor!!). But I hope it will get better. After all, we chose this over other programs because it was supposed to be one of the easier room acoustics programs to use!