Computer Aided Animation in Architecture: Analysis of Use and the Views of the Profession

A traditional way to present three-dimensional representations of architectural design has been through the use of manually drawn perspective drawings. The perspective representation assists in the comprehension of the forms and spaces, but is difficult to manually generate. The computer revolution made perspectives much easier to generate and led to a dramatically increased use of three-dimensional representation as a presentation technique. We are just now seeing substantial uses of animation as a communication and presentation tool in architecture. This paper documents the results of two surveys of the architectural profession that sought to discover the current and near future intentions for the use of computer animation. Our belief is that current levels of computer animation use are low, but that many firms intend to start using animation both as a design and presentation tool. In early 1998 we conducted a survey of the uses of computer animation by architectural firms. We posited a set of 14 related hypotheses. This paper represents the tabulated results from 82 completed surveys out of 620 requests. While some level of confidence can be obtained from this sample size, we are publishing in the hope of encouraging continued response to the survey