DFMA

And that's really, honestly, the big advantage to the panelized system in general.

It's called DFMA, Design for Manufacturing Assembly.

We're starting early on with a 3D model that will become the shop drawings.

And so that assembly set that we deliver to the project team is color coded and super clear.

And a lot of times that's dependent on like where we're shipping to again.

How remote is it? Do they have a framer on crew that could do that anyway? You know, so we can kind of fill in there where it's needed or where it's not needed, hold back on it a little bit.

But again, because of the way the DFMA process works, like that scope would be decided automatically.

really early on.

Well, we started with, uh, Neen Flats Architecture, Tim again, and RMI, the Rocky Mountain Institute, was supporting that, part of that tool, and we've been just developing it since then.

This current one, the DFMA, for architecture, so it's, we're calling it the IC Arch tool, so it's the industrialized construction for architecture.

And we're, we started with, uh, Rhino as our modeling software 'cause that's the most common software in schools of architecture.

And one thing I've learned since my early days with Form Z was that it's the students coming out of school that drag all these new technologies into the profession.

Yeah.

Yeah, so just a lot of, of amazing things happening at McGill.

And there's a lot of information, so let's kind of step back a little bit and start with just the, you know, you talked about the over the wall, the DFMA.

So that's something that not everyone is familiar with, right? So DFMA, design for manufacturing and assembly, has been, like the term has been around for quite some time, and I think it kind of came up during kind of the first wave of industrialization where you really started to think about, you know, the, the whole assembly line and not just p- little pieces at once, right? So it's kind of knowing before you start designing what comes out at the end, how it's gonna be put together, and assembled as well, right? So what does that mean for a typical architecture student's approach to designing a building? What is different about, you know, kind of thinking that way? Because in a way you have to re- a little bit undo [laughs] of what students have been learning, right, and ref- that design process.

You can move within that and inside and outside of that.

And then there are certainly things that are unique within prefabrication, the understanding of DFMA and the understanding of systems thinking and the understanding of the specific equipment and how lines work and the whole attack to movements and just how to kind of manufacture and create that manufacturing mindset has some differences.

And I had to learn that for myself as I overlapped and pivoted from specifically to the trades and construction industry in the prefabrication industry.

So there's a lot of opportunity there.

right? So it's a different, it's a mind shift.

And I think it's really, really important to teach that to students.

So we're actually having an upcoming podcast where we're really diving into what a curriculum geared towards DFMA, design for manufacturing, for architecture students can look like and what that means for software and kind of software you would use and how that can be incorporated into architectural offices even.

So it's super