Adaptive everything

Self-Shading IGU Collaborative Research with EnneadLab Ennead Architects recently approached us to collaboratively submit an entry for a custom designed self shading insulated glazing unit for the TexFab competition . Over the course of two weeks, Brian Guerrero and Aniju Varughese from our building skin group , Colin Schless and Vamshi Gooje from our sustainability group and Jonatan Schumacher and Robert Otani from the Advanced Computational Modeling Team collaborated with five architects of the R&D entity EnneadLab to design an innovative IGU. The proposal was based on a research project that Ennead had previously started internally, and they saw the TexFab competition as an opportunity to continue their previous efforts. Ennead was also very interested in teaming up with our Skin, Sustainability and ACM groups for enhanced research opportunities. The project description below and the graphics were created together with Zach Olczak, Daria Supp, Brian Masuda and Jeff Geisin

Basrah Main Stadium Construction Timeline Basrah Main Stadium under construction. Photo courtesy of Josef Hadi / Skyscraper City In the summer of 2010, we assisted 360 Architecture in designing the GFRP facade panels and connection brackets of the new 65,000 seat soccer stadium in Basrah . The fabrication process had to be reduced by 18 months in order to host the first match in 2013. Given that the panels measure about 100 feet, it takes about 4 months to create one mold. Hence, the number of molds required for GFRP panels had to be reduced from 10 to 5. We worked very closely with the 360 Architecture and with Bahrain based fabricator BFG to accomplish this goal. Here’s a look at the project timeline in photos. April 2010: We start developing panel geometry in Digital Project and use Excel to evaluate the design. Only one panel assembly was modeled, and then instantiated using the PowerCopy feature in Digital Project. July 2010: Brackets were designed in Digital P

We <3 the Geometry Gym Plugins for Grasshopper Grasshopper-designed roof of the Al Menna Sports Complex in Iraq. The smart structural interpreter (ssi) tools for Grasshopper changed the way that we engineers look at modeling. We first tested the ssi plugin in 2010, when we were searching for the fastest possible way to design a stadium roof structure with SAP. Our challenge was to submit a detailed set of drawings for a competition proposal for the fabric roof system of the Al Menaa Sports Complex in Iraq. We spent three days at the offices of 360 Architects , sitting together to generate a parametric model of the roof that would allow us to study different design scenarios, both from an architectural and structural perspective. On day four, we used the ssiSAP interpreter to assign structural material properties to our wireframe geometry, and then to ‘bake’ this into SAP to run analyses. The analysis in SAP is set up relatively quickly for a project such as this – the bulk o

Honeybee is Out and Flying! Illuminance study for the Hudson Yards Culture Shed. We are excited to announce that our own Integration Applications Developer Mostapha Roudsari has recently released Honeybee, his second plugin for environmental analysis, as well as a new version of Ladybug! Honeybee is an ongoing, open source project to connect Grasshopper with validated daylighting and energy simulation engines, such as RADIANCE , Daysim , EnergyPlus and OpenStudio . The current version of Honeybee includes 64 components that enable users to prepare and run a variety of daylight analyses. Here are some of the capability highlights of the current Honeybee release: Prepare geometry: Users can create geometry for simulations by either starting with a mass that can quickly generate zones, or creating the geometry surface by surface to maximize freedom and control. Generate RADIANCE materials: Users can generate a wide variety of Radiance materials by either specifying a material color o

Innovation Moves Ahead The latest round of research funding has been awarded by Thornton Tomasetti’s R&D group, and staffers in several offices and practices are hard at work on bringing these new ideas to life. Projects underway include several sustainability analysis tools, a computer language training program for technical staff and a study on the implications of performance-based wind engineering. These projects were based on proposals submitted to Thornton Tomasetti’s Innovation Suggestion Box, which was launched last year. Funding for these research proposals allows Thornton Tomasetti employees to spend time outside of billable projects to develop unique ideas to improve operations across the firm. In a sense, the R&D initiative gives us a little breathing room to think big. Anyone in the firm can propose a research project, with submissions collected approximately once every quarter. In addition to getting resources allocated for their projects, employees whose proposals

Introducing the Brute Force Solver The Brute Force component, now included in TT Toolbox (release 1.4 and newer), provides an alternative means of running optimization routines in your Grasshopper workflows. Optimization is used loosely here, as this tool is not using an algorithm to find the most optimal combination of sliders, but instead it solves ALL possible combinations of sliders that are connected to the input S. This component and method help to provide a means of looking at design space where you either want to see all possible permutations, or the total possible number of iterations is not so large that it warrants running the study in Galapagos or another optimization algorithm. Brute Force Grasshopper setup, with Listener component (all TT Toolbox components shown in orange). We have found this tool to work wonderfully when synced with our Galapagos Listener component (possibly hinting at a name change there). The setup above allows you to run through all of th

Energy Analysis For Dynamo   – Announcement and Alpha Release CORE studio is pleased to announce that we are developing a new open source plugin called Energy Analysis for Dynamo. We are working with the Dynamo and Building Performance and Analysis (BPA) teams at Autodesk to connect Dynamo , an open source visual programming platform for Autodesk Revit and Vasari, to the Green Building Studio web service ( GBS ), Autodesk’s whole-building energy simulation web service. The project will enable parametric energy modeling and whole-building energy analysis workflows in Dynamo 0.7. Revit and Vasari has a built-in interface for whole-building energy analysis, which allows users to convert their BIM models into energy models and run those energy models in the cloud. The current versions of Revit and Vasari ship with powerful zoning and surface subdivision algorithms to generate gbXML files from conceptual mass models (which, by the way, are exposed by the Revit API—that’s how we are dr

Since the rise of building information modeling, engineers have been working on projects in a growing number of software programs that are designed to facilitate ever more specialized tasks. Platforms such as Revit, Grasshopper, Tekla, Ram Structural Systems, ETABS, and SAP 2000 have given the field increased capabilities and efficiencies in all stages of the project engineering process, whether it be defining geometry, analyzing loads, documentation or fabrication. However, when multiple team members, often in geographically distant locations, are working on a single project across multiple platforms there can be breakdowns in coordination and communication. Work can accidentally be done on out-of-date models. Simultaneous and contrasting changes can be made unbeknownst to the team until it’s too late. And then there is simply the hassle of going back and forth between platforms to ensure that the models are consistent with one another. It was to solve these inefficiencies in comm

1. SAP2000 - Bounding Box Algorithm  2. SAP2000 - Bounding Box Model 3. SAP2000 - ShellStructure - Algorithm 4. SAP2000 - ShellStructure - Model 5. SAP2000 - SpaceStructure - Algorithm 6. SAP2000 - SpaceStructure - Model 7. SAP2000 - ReadDoam + Decomposition 8. SAP2000 - ReadShell + Decomposition 9. SAP2000 - RunAnalysis-ReadResult 10. SAP2000 - Read_Edit_AddGroup  11. SAP2000 - Read_Edit_AddLoadCase Overview DynamoSAP is an open-source project and is currently available on Dynamo’s package manager . We developed the project in C# using Visual Studio, and tested it with Dynamo 0.7.5 and SAP2000 version 16. The package prescribes a few common workflows, which are outlined in the package’s sample files. The library provides a wide range of opportunities for automation of typical tasks in SAP, such as: a. Creating a structural model. The package allows users to generate structural members by using th