TimberDesigner

Tool Overview

TimberDesigner, designed for Revit + Dynamo, offers a quick and efficient way to generate timber framing structures for a commercial or residential building. Users are able to import floor and section geometry (ie. floor width/length, beam sizes, and column sizes) from an Excel file into Dynamo and parametrically change various Dynamo inputs, such as the floor height and the number of bays in the X- and Y-directions, to create the structure they desire. Users are also able to add or remove floors as desired by simply inputting the floor geometries for the number of floors they wish to generate.

This tool is extremely easy to use. Users only need to change the inputs shown below:

Dynamo Inputs

Excel File Inputs

and the tool will do everything else!

Node Logic

This tool imports an Excel file that contains floor geometry and section sizes into Dynamo so that the software may read it and return the relevant information for each floor of the building. Columns are created using a custom node (ColumnDesigner); the node logic for this custom node is shown below:

Beams for the floor and ceiling of each floor are similarly created with a custom node (BeamDesigner); the node logic for this custom node is shown below:

Using these custom nodes and the index of each floor shown below, beams and columns are generated to create the timber framing structure:

Video Demonstration

The following video provides a description of the tool and a demonstration of how users may interact with it: