Overview
In this assignment you’ll design a new multi-story building of a much larger scale – a commercial office building in an urban area. The focus of this assignment is on:
- Learning to explore and develop a design using performance feedback using the Autodesk Forma web tool.
- Using the conceptual model that you create in Forma to quickly model the essential features of the building shell in Revit.
The point of this assignment is to quickly generate and explore design ideas — keeping in mind the program requirements.
Autodesk Forma and Revit conceptual masses are two great tools for quickly exploring design ideas. And this assignment will give you the chance to experiment with how to create a design using them to inform your design decisions.
You’ll complete this assignment in three parts:
- Part I - Creating Massing with Meaning using Autodesk Forma
- Part II - Converting Masses to Building Elements using Revit
- Part III - Sharing Your Proposed Design
Getting Started
You can use this Revit project as a starting point file for this assignment:
Or, if you prefer, you can use one of Revit’s template files. Of those, the Commercial template is probably the best starting point to use.
Design Approach
For larger scale buildings, we often begin the design process by exploring very high-level design decisions (including the overall shape and orientation of the proposed building) by looking at options for how the program requirements for creating a needed amount of space can be addressed within the constraints and taking advantage of the unique opportunities available on the project site.
You can think of this approach as top-down or outside-in. Either way, the point is to make informed choices about the big, impactful design decisions early on – saving decisions about the smaller design details for a later iteration/design phase.
New tools are available that help us analyze and compare many aspects of potential design options to inform our design decisions, and we’ll be using one of them — Autodesk Forma — to help design several options for a specific site and choose the “best” option to move forward with based on the analysis feedback.
Background
Your client – the fast-rising social media company TwitBook – has asked you to propose a design for a new commercial office building or a campus of smaller buildings to meet the needs of their employees and of their expanding business. To enhance the creativity of their young workforce, they’re looking for a very dynamic, fluid series of workspaces that will encourage informal meetings, spontaneous collaboration, and employee well-being.
TwitBook has asked you to create a space that’s a bit different and more daring than the somewhat classical design of most office buildings. This project should be a landmark building that clearly reflects their forward-thinking vision and the cutting-edge work that their employees are doing.
Design Program
Your task is to come up with a proposed design for this new office building or campus.
Your design should include approximately 220,000 to 250,000 SF of useable floor area.
Although you won’t be designing the interior spaces in detail for this assignment, you can imagine that they would include:
- Workspaces -- a mix of walled offices, cubicles, and open workspaces.
- Lots of meetings rooms and informal collaboration / project spaces
- A welcoming lobby space for clients and guests with many conference rooms nearby for meetings and seminars
- Cafe spaces where employees can get some food or coffee right in the building.
- Informal kitchenette / lounge spaces strategically placed near work areas
- Other amenities to support employee wellness
- Gym / workout areas
- Locker room space for bikers and runners
- A day care center
- Open exterior spaces -- for example, terraces and patios -- to take advantage of the favorable natural environment and boost employee productivity
In addition to these programmed spaces, you’ll also need to provide space for the building infrastructure and utilities to support the building users. These spaces typically add about 20-25% to the total building area (bringing your total floor area up to around 264,000 - 312,000 SF).
What’s Expected
Part I — Creating Massing with Meaning using Autodesk Forma
Step 1: Enable Autodesk Forma for Your Autodesk ID.
- Go to http://students.autodesk.com, and sign into your Autodesk account.
- Go to Products and scroll down to the Autodesk Forma tile.
Step 2: Open the Stanford CEE Student Hub
- Choose the Stanford CEE hub from the list of hubs available to you.
- Click the Projects link from the left navigation bar in the Forma web interface, then open the CEE 120A/220A folder in the All projects section of the page.
Step 3: Open the Project for the location that you’d like to work with
- Choose a Project from the list of available project locations. Your options include:
- Phoenix
- San Francisco
- Boston
- Building Data (showing the heights and locations of various buildings directly around your site)
- Road data
- Topography data
- Your Building Site boundary (shown in dark red)
- When you open the Project, you may receive a warning about using an Incompatible Browser (if you are not using Google Chrome as your browser).
You’ll use these Proposal Templates as the starting point for your Proposals.
Most features of Autodesk Forma will work in other browsers (for example, Safari), but for the best experience, we highly recommend that you use the Google Chrome browser.
Step 4: Create a New Design Proposal
Duplicate the Proposal Template to create your new Proposal
- Scroll down the list of Proposals in your project to find the Proposal named “TEMPLATE (Copy Only)”.
- Click the three dot menu, and choose Duplicate to create your new Proposal.
- Select your new Proposal aand click the three dot menu, then choose Rename
- Rename your proposal using a unique name using this form:
- LastName_FirstName_Proposal# — for example, Katz_Glenn_Proposal1
Open your new Proposal and edit it by add new Building Forms
- Select your new Proposal in the list.
- Site Limits
- Terrain
- Buildings
- Roads
- You will be creating your conceptual building form within the Building Site.
- You will then be running analysis on the entire Site Context in order to understand how your building will perform in the context of other buildings.
A Building Site (the location for your new buildings) and Site Context (the zone around your building site that should be included in the analyses) have also been set up for you in the Template project.
This image shows the Building Site and Site Context that have been set up in the Phoenix Project Template.
- Draw your first building form on the Building Site (area indicated by darker red) using Forma’s Building Tools.
Here are some examples of some noteworthy building forms in the news for inspiration:
Analyze your Proposed Design using 2 of the Analyses available
- Choose the Analysis that you’d like to run from the options available in Forma’s Analyze Palette.
- Confirm that the Site Context is set up properly.
- Click the Selection button in the Analyze palette and make sure that the “Site Context” area is highlighted in blue.
- Close the Select Analysis Areas dialog (using the X button) to return to the Analyze palette.
- Choose 2 of the following Analysis Types to perform from the options available in the Analyze palette:
- Sun Hours
- Run an analysis for four different dates (March 21, June 21, September 21, and December 21).
- View the analysis results for each of the dates.
- Observe where sun is hitting the surface and where you are shading neighboring buildings. You will be using this information to help decide on your preferred building form.
- Close the sun hours analysis by clicking the back button in the top left corner of the window.
- Daylight Potential
- Run an analysis.
- View the analysis results for each of the dates.
- Observe
- Close the analysis by clicking the back button in the top left corner of the window.
- Wind
- Microclimate
- Operational Energy
- Noise
- Solar Energy
Review the Results for Each Analysis of this Design Proposal
- After each analysis is completed, click the Open Analysis button to view the results of your analysis for this Design Option.
Repeat Step 4 two additional times to create a total of 3 Design Proposals analyzing different potential building forms for the same project site.
- Duplicate your Proposal created for Step 4.
- Rename the duplicate Proposal using “_Proposal2” or “_Proposal3”.
- Edit and reshape your building form created in Step 4 (or create a new building building form).
- Analyze your new design.
- Run the same (2) analyses that you used for your first proposal — so, you’ll be able to compare the results of the analyses performed on each of the proposals.
Step 5: Compare Your Proposals
- Use Forma's Compare tool to view the results of the analyses performed on each proposal side-by-side.
- Open the Compare tool located at the bottom of the left sidebar.
- Select one of your Proposals from the list displayed in the Compare tool.
- Then, select one of the Analyses that you have performed on that Proposal.
- Repeat these steps to display comparable analyses for each of your three Proposals side-by-side in the comparison viewing area.
Step 6: Post the Comparison of Your Analysis Results
- Save a screenshot showing the side-by-side comparison of the analysis results and paste this screenshot into your Notion posting.
- Your Notion posting should include the images of the side-by-side comparisons of at least 2 of the analyses you performed on your Proposals (at least 2 screenshots).
Step 7: Select the Proposal that you will send to Revit as the “Best” of your design option.
- Select the Proposal that includes the “Best” design option — based on your assessment of the analysis results.
- Post a brief explanation of why you chose this option in your Notion submission.
Part II — Converting Masses to Building Elements using Revit
Send Your Selected “Best” Proposal from Forma to Revit
Option 1 — If you can install software on your computer
- If you’re working on a computer that allows you to install software, install the Forma Add-In for Revit and send your proposal to Revit following these steps:
Option 2 — If you cannot install software in your environment
Import Your Proposal from Forma into a Revit project
Open or create a Revit project
- Open and use this Revit project as a starting point file for importing your Forma proposal
- Or, if you prefer, you can use one of Revit’s template files to create a new Revit project. Of those, the Commercial template is probably the best starting point to use.
Set up the Revit modeling environment
- Set the Project Location to the location that you chose in Forma.
- Use Visibility/Graphics overrides to turn on the visibility of Mass elements in your design view.
Load the Forma Proposal
- Open the Massing & Site > Forma > Load Proposal tool to load in your proposed design.
- First, choose the Load Options tool to specify how the elements in your Forma proposal should be imported:
- Turn on Create walls, floors, and roofs for building to automatically create these elements in Revit for your buildings created using Forma’s standard design tools.
- Turn on Create conceptual masses for 3D Sketch elements to create conceptual masses using for any buildings created using Forma’s 3D Sketch tools.
- Next, choose the Load Proposal tool to import the Forma proposal elements using these settings.
Refining with the Imported Geometry
Working with Geometry Converted from Buildings Created using Forma’s Standard Design Tools
- If you turned on the Create walls, floors, and roofs for building option while loading your Proposal, the import tool will automatically create these elements in Revit during the import process.
- You can choose these walls, floors, and roof elements in Revit and edit them using any of the standard techniques for editing Revit elements:
- Changing the Wall, Floor, or Roof types.
- Adding Doors or Windows.
- Editing the Floor or Roof boundaries.
- Cutting Shafts.
- And so on…
Working with Geometry Converted from Building Forms Created using Forma’s 3D Sketch tool
- If you turned on the Create conceptual masses for 3D Sketch elements option while loading your Proposal, the import tool will convert these 3D Sketch elements into Revit conceptual masses.
- If you turned on Floors while creating your building form using 3D Sketch, Revit Mass Floors and Levels will automatically be created matching the floor-to-floor heights you set up there.
- Convert your Conceptual Masses into Revit building elements.
- Converting the Mass Floors to Floor elements.
- Convert the mass floor at the ground level to a floor type that is appropriate for being placed on grade -- for example, you might duplicate a generic type and create an 8” Concrete Slab floor type.
- Convert the upper level mass floors to a floor type that is typical for floors above grade -- for example, LW Concrete on Metal Deck.
- Convert the top surfaces of your conceptual masses to Roof elements.
- Open the Roof by Face tool.
- Choose a Roof type for the roof elements to be created.
- Select the surfaces to be converted to roofs.
- Convert the vertical surfaces of your conceptual masses to Wall elements.
- You can convert vertical and sloping surfaces into basic wall types or curtain wall types using the Wall by Face tool.
- Surfaces that have a compound curvature cannot be modeled using the basic wall types. For these surfaces, use the Curtain System by Face tool.
Add Key Building Infrastructure Features
- After refining the imported geometry, add these key building infrastructure features as Revit elements:
- Two or more stairways will be needed for emergency egress. Model the building stairways using:
- A Multi-Story Stair to span all the required levels.
- A Shaft element to cut openings in all the floors.
- Walls around the stair shafts.
- Model any atriums or openings between the floor levels using Shaft elements.
Part III — Sharing Your Proposed Design
Create new views to showcase and share your conceptual design model
- Create a few exterior camera views at the ground level to show the appearance of the buildings from a street view perspective.
- Create a few 3D views to share aerial/birds-eye view perspectives.
- Create a building section view to show any special interior relationship between the floor levels -- for example, at an atrium or floor opening.
Place these new views on sheets
- Exterior camera views at the ground level to show the appearance of the buildings from a street view perspective.
- 3D views to share aerial/birds-eye view perspectives.
- A building section view to show the relationships between the floor levels.
Sharing Your Project
Please follow the instructions in the Canvas assignment to upload your building model to your folder on Autodesk Construction Cloud Documents and create a new post sharing your project on this linked Notion page.
Points to Ponder / Wrap-Up Questions
Please choose 2 of the following Points to Ponder questions and share your comments on this linked Notion page.