Progress towards multi-criteria design optimisation using DesignScript with SMART form, robot structural analysis and Ecotect building performance analysis

Important progress towards the development of a system that enables multi-criteria design optimization has recently been demonstrated during a research collaboration between Autodesk’s DesignScript development team, the University of Bath and the engineering consultancy Buro Happold. This involved integrating aspects of the Robot Structural Analysis application, aspects of the Ecotect building performance application and a specialist form finding solver called SMART Form (developed by Buro Happold) with DesignScript to create a single computation environment. This environment is intended for the generation and evaluation of building designs against both structural and building performance criteria, with the aim of expediently supporting computational optimization and decision making processes that integrate across multiple design and engineering disciplines.

A framework was developed to enable the integration of modeling environments with analysis and process control, based on the authors’ case studies and experience of applied performance driven design in practice. This more generalised approach (implemented in DesignScript) enables different designers and engineers to selectively configure geometry definition, form finding, analysis and simulation tools in an open-ended system without enforcing any predefined workflows or anticipating specific design strategies and allows for a full range of optimisation and decision making processes to be explored.

This system has been demonstrated to practitioners during the Design Modeling Symposium, Berlin in 2011 and feedback from this has suggested further development.