Flex your form
Part 1
Part 2
For Part 1, I tested the Twisting Rectangular Mass by holding the main dimensional parameters constant and varying only the Twist parameter from 0° to 80°. I created six mass instances, assigned one twist value to each instance in Dynamo, and read the Revit-reported Gross Floor Area, Gross Surface Area, and Gross Volume for each scenario. The results showed that, within this family and mass-floor setup, greater twist reduced the reported floor area, surface area, and volume. Four of the six tested scenarios stayed within the target range of 2.5M–3.0M SF. The two highest-twist cases dropped below the target, which helped define a practical upper limit for this parameter range. For Part 2, I used a cactus as the design reference for the new mass. I wanted the form to respond to Dubai’s harsh desert conditions through a shape language tied to a resilient desert organism. The rounded profile, tapered base, and changing mid-height condition are abstracted from the way a cactus stores volume, narrows, and expands while maintaining vertical continuity. I did not model the cactus literally; I used it as a formal precedent to create a softer, more organic tower profile that could still be controlled through a small set of parameters. This second test showed a nonlinear relationship between Mid Height and gross floor area. Some mid-height values brought the mass within the target range, while lower and higher values moved the form outside it. This made the Dynamo workflow useful as an evaluation tool rather than only a modeling tool.
Point to Ponder: What’s the advantage of exporting the values to Excel? Exporting the results to Excel was useful because it linked each input value directly to the resulting metrics. That made the comparison easier to document, reduced manual copying errors, and created a table that could be updated if the Dynamo graph was rerun with revised parameter values.