From physical to digital in structural engineering classrooms using digital fabrication

In this paper, a set of digital artifacts related to simple examples of structural engineering are presented. The artifacts are real-time applications and visualizations of typical problems students from the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) schools are acquainted with. The real-time nature of the examples allow a high level of interaction between humans and the classic visualization of results, namely, bending and shear force diagrams, internal stresses distributions, and contour plots. These artifacts may provide in AEC a twofold educational target: (i) for users, to provide visual understanding in real time of typical problems that must be understood in classic lectures of structural engineering; (ii) for developers, to provide meaningful applications of applied digital fabrication using sensors, microcontrollers, and GUI's and their potential in the development of tools related to Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and the Internet of Things (IoT) among students of the AEC sector.