Teaser Image:
Above shows a sample design produced by the Generative Design tool.
Name of Tool: SITE-TRIS
Overview: “ReadMe”
SITE-TRIS is a Proof-of-Concept for site managers looking to define construction trailers, material storage space, and auxillary facility layout on site.
- Objective: Construction Site Managers may need to define the layout of construction trailers and other auxiliary facilities on site. However, placing these different facilities in an optimal manner is not an easy task. How might we create a tool that generates possible layouts for the site manager to select from while optimizing some of the key metrics that site managers care about?
- Model: The site has been idealized as a rectangular box, and construction site facilities have been modeled as uniform containers of standard length and width, to be placed along the perimeter of the site. It is possible to vary the size of each facility in terms of the number of standard containers.
- Design Variables:
- X,Y Coordinates for placement of each site facility: Note that this study may not strictly follow Generative Design principles as the study varies two seeds that influence:
- 1: Choice of which perimeter line to place the facility on (0, 1, 2, 3)
- 2: Choice of point on perimeter line to center the facility (Scale between 0 - 1 where 0 is one end of the line and 1 is the other end of the line)
- Constants: The user can customize the following inputs to the Generative Design study by opening the .dyn file and varying the inputs:
- Site Length
- Site Width
- Exit Coordinates (The coordinates have been fixed to be on one perimeter line, but the user can change this.)
- Size of a generic container box (each site facility is assumed to be composed from an integer number of container boxes, and the size may vary depending on location/country)
- Container Box Length
- Container Box Width
- Number of container boxes for each site facility:
- Main Construction Site Trailer
- Materials Storage
- Restrooms
- Welfare Facilities
- Security
- Auxiliary Trailers
- Evaluators:
- Constraints:
- No facilities overlap
- No facilities generated that exceed site layout boundaries
- Outputs:
- Average distance to exit (an average of the sum of distances for each temporary facility to the exit was calculated)
- Average distance to other facilities (average of the sum of distance from every facility to every other facility)
Some ideas for more constraints and outputs are proposed in the future work section below.
- Interpretation:
The layout of graph nodes that comprise the generative design study is shown below:
Walking through the logic of the graph:
- First, the user checks through the constants and modifies these constants to fit their project’s requirements.
- Next, the user runs the generative design study.
- The study takes random seeds and outputs variants of site layouts that fit the constraints (in pink) and minimize the two evaluator outputs (in orange). There is often a trade-off between these two outputs.
The rectangular cuboids of each facility are created as follows:
- Calculate length and width of each site facility type:
- Build rectangular site layout
- Generate random combinations of the perimeter location (composed of perimeter line and relative location on perimeter line) to place each facility
- Generate 4 points with which to extrude cuboid
- Extrude cuboid for each facility
Other Possibilities:
- If the user is not certain of the size of any facility, they can make the facility’s size an input and vary it in the generative design study to see potential layouts.
Recommendations for Future Work:
- Allow site floor plate configurations with irregular shapes. For example, stacking two rectangles, polygonal shape, etc.
- Allow for site facilities to be sized in various combinations of rectangles
- Allow site facilities to be placed within the site instead of just on the boundaries. However, it is typical for site facilities to be placed along the boundaries since the middle of the site is typically the main construction zone, hence this simplification was made.
- Allow for multiple site facilities of each type to be created and placed.
- Increase the number of constraints. For example, perhaps some facilities should not be placed near other facilities, or some facilities should be placed within a certain radius of other facilities (e.g. restrooms proximity to site trailers, or logistics storage to a crane placement)
- Increase the number of output evaluators. For example, minimize the distance to a specific site facility (instead of just average walking time to all facilities).
References:
Recorded Video Demo:
Acknowledgements:
Thank you Nico for the guidance on how to set up this generative design study (especially on making the study more scalable than the original version, which involved specifying lengths and widths for each site facility. This method of constructing the four points and extruding the cuboid for each site facility is more generative). The class has been an enriching primer to the use of generative design tools - it is a interesting new way to think about problems (instead of linear optimization, which I’m used to). I appreciate Professor Glenn, Nico and Gabriel’s time in putting the class together. Thank you for a great quarter!