Intended users
This tool serves to assist architects & engineers early in the building design process by quickly and simply evaluating the weight, cost, and embodied carbon associated with the structural frame of a given building design based on the building dimensions and structural materials used.
Need you’re trying to provide a solution or support for
It’s important to be able to assess the costs and carbon emissions associated with various building designs quickly and easily throughout the design process. Since structural frames are often the largest contributor to a building’s embodied carbon, this tool will encompass both a simple configurator to generate a structural frame for a given building design, as well as a design ‘assistant’ that will report the total weight and embodied carbon associated with the generated frame based on the dimensions and materials used.
The purpose of this tool is to be able to evaluate the tradeoffs between the costs and carbon footprints of different building frame designs (based on dimensions/parameters and material types) as you go.
Inputs
Building form dimensions: width, length, and height of building
Framing system parameters: framing edge offset distance, floor-to-floor height
Beam systems: fixed u/v divisions, number of beams in beam system, rotate beam system 90 degrees
Materials: options for steel, reinforced concrete, and composite building frame types
Underlying logic of the model you’ll implement
- Construct parametric structural frame using input parameters to construct placement geometry and place structural framing types
- Calculate weight and embodied carbon of structural framing elements based on materials used
- Estimate total cost of frame based on weight and cost of materials used
Outputs
Categorized list of building frame elements
Total weight of structural frame generated
Estimate for total embodied carbon associated with the structural frame generated
Estimated cost of materials used