I’m sorry this isn’t perfect or even great. Dynamo has been crashing and loading so slowly for me (as in loading for a few minutes every time I try to add a node or change something) and I can’t get it to stop. I am a PhD student just trying to learn the software but can’t use the cluster computers because I need to be in my lab for most of the day. I did my best and even asked for an extension to get it done but it’s not great and I need to eventually submit because I have other obligations (including sleep). I will delete and redownload and try to fix this before next assignment, but can’t at this point.
I chose to do this entirely in dynamo, because the computer I am using crashes when I try it using revit to make a mass/mass floors 🥲
- For 2 or More Units: Create Two New Evaluator Nodes
Personally, I really value windows in a building. I want big windows to let in a lot of light, and dislike when the room/apartment/subsection of the building I am in only has a small amount of exterior wall space to itself. A simple way to measure this is by comparing exterior surface area and the floorspace. For example, a building that has an oblong cross section will have a higher ratio of exterior wall area to floor area, whereas a more circular one will have a lower ratio. If we were to break up this building into apartments, for example, each apartment would get less exterior wall, and thus have less space for windows. This can also be done on a floor-by-floor basis, checking the exterior area per floor (estimated by floor perimeter*story height) and comparing it to each floor. Of course, by some other metrics (heating/cooling, for example), a higher ratio would be worse, so it really depends on what is viewed as ideal for that design.
I also looked at cost of a building, but wanted to consider cost/sqft, as obviously a taller building will be more expensive, but will also have a lot more sqft for utilizing. Similar to the example, which suggested higher levels cost more, I made my own cost function for each floor based on a quick google search but made sure to include a bunch of parameters that can be varied given the actual situation. The function doesn’t have meaningful units, but can be used to compare:
where s1 and s2 are variable scalars (and base cost of the lowest floor is variable as well) and the inputs are floor area, floor number, total number of floors. We can sum these floor costs and divide by the total floor area to get a cost/sqft metric. The node took in floor surface areas, which I calculated from a custom node that builds floors and returns the floor surfaces and their areas (similar to the way shown in last week’s kickoff).
- An Image/screenshot of your summary table (created in Word, Excel, Google Sheets, or any data table tool) showing the input values tested and the values computed for each of the reported parameters
This was a very frustrating assignment to do, as dynamo had to think and load between every third click and it took forever having to wait. Because of this, a lot of this isn’t done as well as I would have liked, and that includes this table, which I just copy/pasted to make:
top radius | top height | gross surface area | gross volume | gross floor area | surface area : floor area | cost : sq ft |
100 | 600 | 865317.689 | 83087745.665 | naturally, dynamo crashed as I wanted to copy these over. it’s currently giving me the spinning wheel of death | ||
100 | 650 | 913474.408 | 86822845.864 | |||
100 | 700 | 963917.712 | 90821477.290 | |||
100 | 750 | 1016030.934 | 95021741.789 | |||
125 | 600 | 873107.132 | 84535811.843 | |||
125 | 650 | 925110.205 | 88705189.591 | |||
125 | 700 | 979049.723 | 93108461.265 | |||
125 | 750 | 1034377.339 | 97686468.637 | |||
150 | 600 | 881521.608 | 86207958.125 | |||
150 | 650 | 937443.815 | 90863084.897 | |||
150 | 700 | 994924.549 | 95714674.528 | |||
150 | 750 | 1053503.009 | 100709658.841 |
- point to ponder: I think my metrics help decide between options! Of course, they are only two metrics, and many more exist. These are the ones that I felt would be important (that weren’t exactly examples, obviously things like view matter too), but another person might think other metrics are more important.
- For 3 or More Units: Develop a Single-Objective Optimization Scheme
- my two metrics do somewhat contradict each other. One can imagine that a narrower and taller building would have better windows/views but be more expensive per square foot, as we are building higher and higher. If we are building something in Dubai, no one expects it to be cheap. But, people do expect it to be amazing – and not having enough windows to see the views would not be amazing. Still, as a developer, we do want to keep costs low. Thus, I would personally weigh the surface area : floor area measurement as more important than the cost : sqft ratio.
- as for the other metrics, surface area, volume, and floor area generally increase with each other, as bigger buildings have larger values. Of course, they are not directly correlated, so if one of these metrics is most important, another one might have to be secondary.
- we can make a simple cost function with weights to ensure convexity and optimize:
- given I think the first metric is more important, we would scale w1 and w2 to reflect this, and pick the input values that result in the largest value of C.
- I ran out of time to finish this, but I hope I can get partial credit. I know how to do this, but dynamo will not stop with the spinning wheel of death no matter if I restart the software or my computer. Sorry!