DEVELOPMENT OF PARAMETRIC DESIGN SOFTWARE

Abstract

Parametric architecture starts with parameters. These parameter starts with dimensions volumes and continue towards economics factors. There is a gap between various types of analysis that forerun the design phases and the architectural design itself. The physical parametric design embeds feedback loop aims design exploration process. in order to enable parametric model to have feedback loop and the system not being broken, the parametric design system includes three blocks: Data input, algorithm and data export. The parametric design system in my case is researching to develop a plugin. The need of this plugin development can be seen by the survey results that shows majority of architects and designer need a platform where an engineer and analyst can understand and implement design coordination much easily then current practices. To achieve better design process architect want to study to all the aspects of design which includes the climatic approach, structural stability as well as aesthetic of design. The development of this plugin is on rhinoceros platform on which grasshopper plugin works. The plugin developed can do both energy and structural analysis on the single platform. Starting from the surface of the building volume might be outputted as a mesh to FEM analysis software and checked for stress and deformation by assigning the distributed load to it. The values of the analysis are outputted as a stress value for every mesh vertex and brought in to the spreadsheet. It is logical to conclude that for this surface (envelope) to successfully respond to the loads and have a structural value the material thickness has to be related to the stress value at each point on the envelope. Next, the same surface can be checked for solar exposure. The envelope of the building (the resultant volume of the previous design explorations) can be checked for the incident solar radiation based on weather file for the area. The output of this query comes as a set of data that contains the locations of the analysed points on the mesh, the normal vectors and the values of the solar exposure for each particular point on the mesh (or for each mesh face). Again, all the data can be outputted in a single spreadsheet. These tools and methods made possible to rationalize the design output by tying together in one stream such abstract things as designer's ideas, client's feedback and inputs, precise environmental data, site information and fabrication opportunities.