Angelina Lee

STAGE 1 PT 1

Parameters (not all are listed, bolded are the flexed ones):

• top height
• top rotation
• mid rotation
• base rotation
• base radius

Modeling Approach:

• incorporated Stage 3 with Stage 1

1. set up in Revit (loading families, changing view settings, adding location, etc)
2. build node logic slowly, starting with one flexed input, and up to two
3. test node logic with an existing parametric tower form
4. add more iterations, and export to excel
5. add excel headers to be more readable and automatic

Challenges:

• played around with so many towers, but was bothersome to keep changing the parameters (some differed), so ended up just sticking with two towers (one above and the other I made below), and keeping those parameter names all in one place at the beginning
• took a while making the excel headers, but got more familiar with lists. This was a great resource: https://primer.dynamobim.org/06_Designing-with-Lists/6-3_lists-of-lists.html

STAGE 1 PT 2

Parameters (not all are listed, bolded are the flexed ones):

• top rotation
• top width
• top depth
• top height
• mid rotation
• mid width
• mid depth
• mid height
• base rotation
• base width
• base depth

Modeling Approach:

• incorporated Stage 3 with Stage 1

1. adapt twisting tower template to my micky mouse design
2. load in that new family and change mass to be that new family
3. reselect mass in dynamo, and add/relink parameter names
4. export to new tab in excel
5. iterate two parameters to find where 2.5M < sqft < 3M while building still remains within 984’x328’x755’ site limits

Challenges:

• optimizing for the design and economic constraints was a lot of trial and error. Sometimes, the one angle of a top height didn’t work, so ended up either switching that angle or removing that height. Retrospectively, could have done more increments (I did 12 instead of 6 already, but still could have done more at one time), but laptop was pretty slow at running, so decided against.

Findings:

• Exporting to excel is a good workflow, especially since some things are faster done in there. I did play with the override function, and that could allow for an even more integrated (though mayhaps more confusing) workflow with values imported into some columns from Dynamo but calcs done in Excel
• Hard to adjust for aesthetics, but faster to do in Excel anyways
• Please about my custom header node logic

STAGE 2

Parameters (not all are listed, bolded are the flexed ones):

• top rotation
• top width
• top depth
• top height
• mid rotation
• mid width
• mid depth
• mid height
• base rotation
• base width
• base depth
• story height

Modeling Approach:

• incorporated Stage 3 with Stage 2

1. recreate the building form in dynamo, first used the main workspace and the same values from Stage 1 Part 2 to verify, then moved it into a custom node (I’m very happy with how this turned out hehe)
2. adjust the subsequent node logic, no longer needed some custom nodes (BuildingForm.Evaluate…) used in Stage 1, and had to adapt a custom node (EvaluationResults… —> Stage2EvaluateResults)
3. export to another tab in excel

Challenges:

• making the profile scalable, but accomplished that with vectors for attaining midpoints
• adapting and creating custom nodes while not being in the main workspace (hard to visualize what is happening)
• having all the custom nodes in the right file location (a lot of closing out of Dynamo and/or reopening that file from workspace menu)

Findings:

• chose to flex top height and top rotation because the building costs get linearly more expensive the higher we get, so varying height and amount of sf at the top will have the largest impact on budget
• for gross volume: the top rotation parameter had a larger impact per deg rotated as compared with 1’ of additional height added per the top height parameter
• for gross surface area: the top height parameter had a larger impact per ft of height added as compared with the top rotation parameter’s impact per deg of rotation.
• for gross floor area: top rotation had larger impact using those same units. Though mayhaps that’s not as fair of a comparison, since it’s only every 12’ (story height) when floor area gets added

STAGE 3

note: yellow = min, green = max (those highlights were done in excel, but values came from Dynamo). The headers were done directly in Dynamo and are scalable with few adjustments to the inputs (adding header names and adding them to the created list)

Parameters (not all are listed):

• (see stages 1 and 2 for flexed parameters)

Modeling Approach:

• incorporated Stage 3 with Stages 1 and 2

1. locate min and max of specific columns
2. locate input values that give min and max

Challenges:

• didn’t have coding challenges here, main thing to note was choosing the desired columns and against what criterion
• I intentionally made the same geometry in Dynamo for Stage 2 to match the massing I created in Revit for Stage 1 Part 2 so that I could compare the two (should be identical), but the values were off. Gross floor areas were similar enough, but gross surface areas were quite different, which TAs and I are attributing to differences in code logic for massing in Revit vs with the Dynamo sequence I used. But overall, quite proud of how I was able to recreate that micky mouse profile.

Findings:

• min values lead to min efficiency ratio value
• max values do not lead to max efficiency ratio value
• hence, increasing surface areas and floor areas does not mean building is more efficient