Stage 1 Part 1
Base Radius (ft) | Gross Surface Area (ft^2) |
80 | 512232.34 |
90 | 675214.73 |
100 | 865521.42 |
110 | 1084302.93 |
120 | 1332575.94 |
130 | 1611220.45 |
140 | 1921010.31 |
150 | 2262616.03 |
160 | 2636626.50 |
For my design, I decided to flex the “base radius” of the existing rounded triangular tower. Apart from the already established relationships, I added the formula to ensure that the “top radius” was 3/4 the “base radius”. One thing that I didn’t consider when choosing to proceed with this tower shape was that it didn’t efficiently use space because the max depth limit was reached more quickly than the max width. Meaning that although max depth was reached, there was a lot of space left within the max width. This is why the max radius I evaluated was 160’. I was however able to reach the minimum gross floor area when the radius was 160’. Apart from flexing the “base radius” one could also flex the “top rotation”, “top radius”, and “base rotation”.
Stage 1 Part 2
Mid Rotation (degrees) | Gross Surface Area (ft^2) |
20 | 3017432.618 |
25 | 3008904.244 |
30 | 2994704.408 |
35 | 2974842.855 |
40 | 2949367.329 |
45 | 2918369.926 |
50 | 2881993.92 |
55 | 2840440.011 |
60 | 2793970.688 |
I didn’t have a clear idea going into Part 2 of what I wanted my design to be. But using the Chevrolet tower template and the diamond profiles I was able to create what I think is a pretty interesting form. My twisting tower consists of a diamond base, a Chevrolet middle, and a diamond top. There were no established relationships, so I created some shown in the properties screenshot. The remaining dimensions that I could flex were then “top rotation”, “mid rotation”, and “base rotation”. I decided to flex the the “mid rotation” dimension and saw that as the rotation increased, the floor area decreased. Also, when looking to get a picture of my form, I found that a top down view looked much cooler and dynamic than straight on.
Points to Ponder: What’s the advantage of exporting the values to Excel?
I think the advantage of exporting the values to Excel is that you don’t have to manually copy over the values yourself every time you run your code. Instead, your values automatically update and only require formatting to get the values into a organized table.