Thinking Topologically at Early Stage Parametric Design
Parametric modelling tools have allowed architects and engineers to explore complex geometries with relative ease at the early stage of the design process. Building designs are commonly created by authoring a visual graph representation that generates bui
- PDF / 1,172,455 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 468 x 686 pts Page_size
- 55 Downloads / 146 Views
John Harding University of Bath & Ramboll UK Sam Joyce University of Bath
Paul Shepherd University of Bath
Chris Williams University of Bath
Abstract. Parametric modelling tools have allowed architects and engineers to explore complex geometries with relative ease at the early stage of the design process. Building designs are commonly created by authoring a visual graph representation that generates building geometry in model space. Once a graph is constructed, design exploration can occur by adjusting metric sliders either manually or automatically using optimization algorithms in combination with multi-objective performance criteria. In addition, qualitative aspects such as visual and social concerns may be included in the search process. The authors propose that whilst this way of working has many benefits if the building type is already known, the inflexibility of the graph representation and its top-down method of generation are not well suited to the conceptual design stage where the search space is large and constraints and objectives are often poorly defined. In response, this paper suggests possible ways of liberating parametric modelling tools by allowing changes in the graph topology to occur as well as the metric parameters during building design and optimisation.
1
Introduction
Parametric modelling is now well established within the computational design community. Software applications such as Grasshopper by McNeel & Associates, Bentley Generative Components (GC) and more recently DesignScript by Autodesk allow complex ideas to be explored at the early stage of design that go beyond what is possible using the traditional methods of hand sketching and model
L. Hesselgren et al. (eds.), Advances in Architectural Geometry 2012 © Springer-Verlag/Wien 2013
67
J. Harding, S. Joyce, P. Shepherd and C.Williams
making alone. In addition to the generic software platforms, in recent years many third-party analysis plug-ins have also been developed that provide real-time performance feedback to assist at the early stage of design [Shea et al. 2003]. A combination of parametric modelling, performance analysis tools and heuristics allow for a variety of design options to be explored both quantitatively and qualitatively by adjusting numeric parameters. As the most impactful decisions in the design process are made at the start of any project, tools which assist good decision making at this early stage are of great help to the design team. 1.1
One user - one graph - one model
Parametric modelling is not an easy task. As Woodbury and Aish [2005] state: "Designers must model not only the artifact being designed, but a conceptual structure that guides variation. At the same time they must attend to the multifaceted design task at hand." The recent rise of parametric modelling tools has further emphasised that the process of structuring of the graph has become integral to the design process itself, leading to the term 'parametric design' . Parametric design requires the user to construct a single directed ac
Data Loading...
