Flexed Provided Example (Flying Chevron Arc) (Left) and Flexed Custom Tower (rectangular notched) (Right)
Results for provided example (Left) and custom tower (Right)
For this assignment, both the provided example tower and the custom tower I made used the same Dynamo graph logic. I duplicated the graph for each tower and updated only the parameter name and Excel output path.
I chose to flex the twist angle for my iterations, since it's an aspect that drastically changes the aesthetics of a building while also having interesting effects on the three tracked metrics (GFA, Surface Area, Volume). Twist angle felt like the most architecturally meaningful single parameter to study, since it produces a visually distinct family of forms without changing footprint size or building height.
I was able to successfully set the location of my Revit model to Dubai, which sets the project up for downstream solar and climate analysis. The masses were placed and then discretized by the levels as per the instructions to enable Gross Floor Area computation through Mass Floors.
I used a custom node to organize the parameter-set and metric-computation logic, which also enabled List.Map iteration. List.Map requires the custom node to be passed as a function with twist angle as the variable parameter. The range of rotations was defined by user inputs (start, end, step) for flexibility. To organize the results into Excel, I used a code block to extract and reorder the data into clean rows.
For extra credit, I added a ratio column (GFA / Surface Area) and a flag that marks the row with the highest ratio with a star, giving the user an at-a-glance indicator of the most efficient form. Higher ratios mean more usable floor area per unit of envelope, which correlates with lower facade cost and better thermal performance, which was an initial goal of this assignment.
I combined the template and custom towers into a single Dynamo file, Revit file, and Excel file, so my submission was not many files.
One observation from the iterations: GFA, Surface Area, and Volume all decreased as the twist angle increased (generally). This is a real geometric consequence of how the lofted form interpolates between the rotated profiles. Intermediate cross-sections become "pinched" relative to the base profile. Aggressive twists on non-circular profiles cost usable floor area. Without running this iteration, that trade-off wouldn't have been quantitatively obvious. Again, this is different depending on geometry, but it is a trend I noticed for my towers.
Point to Ponder: Exporting to Excel matters for a few reasons. First, it preserves the parametric chain end-to-end: any time the inputs change and the graph re-runs, the Excel file updates automatically, with no manual re-transcription that could introduce errors. Second, Excel is genuinely powerful for post-processing. Sorting, filtering, charting, and computing derived metrics (like the GFA/Surface Area ratio) is faster and more flexible there than in Dynamo. Third, Excel is a universal handoff format. Once results are in a spreadsheet, they can go to anyone on the design team (architects, sustainability consultants, cost estimators) without requiring them to open Revit or Dynamo. The spreadsheet becomes the artifact that supports the design decision, while Dynamo and Revit remain the engines that produce it.