##### Types of visualization in AEC

Such a list is like any other list; no matter how many things you list, others will clamor to lengthen the list.

I’m not interested in list exhaustion though, so I limit this to two types of visualization in AEC, both workhorses, the latter a war horse.

1. **Rendering**, i.e., illustration.
2. **Technical drawing**, i.e., construction drawing.

**Rendering** is about showing what it’s like to be in, or around, a place.

Renderings are evocative.

**Technical drawing** is about showing what a thing is.

Here are some architectural renderings I did between 2004 and 2008:

## **Technical drawing**

Showing what a thing is, as opposed to _evoking what a place is like_, specifically involves 5 things _,_ those in the text on the black field below:

_Drawing_ is the vehicle for **[looking with intent](/content/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/look-with-intent-and-show.1.png)** — at models mental, physical, and digital — **and showing that you did**. That means the following:

I did construction drawing for 12 years at architecture firms, incidentally, largely via automation starting in 1996, automating drawing graphics from models.

Then I went to work in software development.

I brought the work I’d done in two kinds of visualization to software. This led to contributions:

- V2.0 (see below), automated drawing-model fusion, now in 9 software products.

- V3.0, what happens to drawing and modeling _**media**_ (as media) after their fusion (proposed):

> A progression is underway:

## [V1.0 Drawings in Mental Models](/content/why-do-we-need-better-vcs-equipment-the-pragmatic-answer/index.html)

Drawing is the vehicle for **[looking with intent](/content/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/look-with-intent-and-show.1.png)** — at models mental, physical, and digital — **and showing that you did**.

From the first time anyone scratched out a drawing on a cave wall, they instantiated the graphic where it is in-situ within the mental model in formation in their mind. [An interplay was underway](/content/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/look-with-intent-and-show.1.png).

## [V2.0 Drawing-Model Fusion (2012)](/content/tgn/earlier-media-innovations/index.html)

I invented the automatic fusion of drawings in digital models in 2012. See the story here: [Drawing-Model Fusion 2012](/content/tgn/earlier-media-innovations/index.html)

Fusion, …like [recorded sound in (formerly) silent film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film).

With the popularization of digital modeling by the 1990s, technical drawing continued [in its usual role](/content/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/look-with-intent-and-show.1.png) while instantiation into the model remained unaltered since the time of cave painting (V1.0), mental exercise alone, unassisted by the digital model.

## [(OPEN VCS) V3.0](/content/visual-engagement-with-modeled-worlds/index.html)

Using digital models to evolve the **_**_form_**_**

**_of expression_**, of **the vehicle for** **[looking with intent](/content/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/look-with-intent-and-show.1.png)** — at models mental, physical, and digital — **and showing that you did**.

Not only a fusion, but [an evolution in form](/content/visual-engagement-with-modeled-worlds/index.html) that surfaces the best of both media (model and drawing), in a new form of expression greater than the sum of its parts.