Adaptive everything

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...