Rachel Waite, Business Development Manager, FenestraPro discusses the importance of performance led generative design for AEC
Architecture is about providing a sense of place, a comfortable setting to live, work or play. It’s also about how a building fits into its context, how the elevation and shape relate. Building performance is also an important consideration – how do you achieve an architectural solution by adding additional criteria such as controlling heat losses and heat gains, while also maximising natural daylight?
BIM brings new opportunities to design
Advances in Building Information Modelling (BIM) present massive opportunities for performance considerations to be married to the aesthetic. The emergence of computational design in manufacturing has shown a way that design options can be presented and refined based on set goals. FenestraPro is taking this approach into the AEC industry and providing a solution focused on performance led generative design, which uses selected performance goals to explore permutations of the design solution to find the best option to meet the aesthetic requirement.
Imagine automatically generating different design outcomes based on performance requirements while having instantaneous feedback from different perspectives, including the aesthetic, to produce the most optimised design solution available. In simple terms, the concept of generative design is like finding directions in Google Maps – it allows you to choose from different “routes” to your final (design) destination without compromising on where your planned arrival is, or how to get there.
FenestraPro
FenestraPro utilises this concept by allowing the user to explore different options on how to get to the desired place they want to get to from a design standpoint, while optimising façade design. In both the conceptual design environment and the project environment, FenestraPro dynamically proposes design alternatives based on user defined energy requirements. It is a unique application that operates within Revit as a modeless add-in, reading directly from the model and generating the design solution on the model.
Optimal design solutions including glazing arrangements and shading design are created and written back to the model dynamically and intuitively. Further development will see the introduction of more sophisticated shading devices, as well as introducing defined alternatives for glazing and shading to meet pre-defined performance criteria in the project environment.
The concept of generative design is changing the world of design by saving time through the generation of multiple ideas, along with performance-based options, boosting creativity by exploring additional design options, and preventing expensive changes thereby saving time and cost. FenestraPro is leading the way in performance led generative design for AEC and enabling the designer to create better performing buildings to meet the aesthetic intent.
| “Modelling and simulation are an important way to evaluate facade performance. Effective design tools should evaluate accurately, but more importantly should speed up and simplify the design process, so that it becomes affordable for the design firm and easier for designers of all technical abilities to carry it out. Tools that provide rapid generation of design alternatives become the key to this comprehensive, affordable design approach.”
Adam Simmons – Regional BIM Manager, Gensler, Washington DC. |
Rachel Waite
Business Development Manager
FenestraPro
rwaite@fenestrapro.com
Please note: this is a commercial profile
