- The link to your Module 7 folder in our Autodesk Construction Cloud project
The design that I chose to optimize was a simple tent structure, like the one seen in the image above. These structures are commonly used as temporary shade and I wanted to investigate how the placement and height of the supporting poles impacted the total volume enclosed by the tent. More specifically, I wanted to find the optimal height and location of the poles to maximize the area under the tent while minimizing the size of the columns.
Step 1 - Generative Design Framework
To evaluate the different design possibilities of a tent structure, the following design decisions were considered.
- Design Decision 1: Environment
- Design Variables
- Height inside the tent
- What is the average height (is it high in only one spot and low elsewhere?)
- Spacing/locations of support columns
- Evaluators
- Area under the tent
- Shape of tent (for aesthetics)
- Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
- Increased height will require a larger support column
- Closely spaced columns may result in a single high point and leave the rest of the tent with low ceiling heights
- Design Decision 2: Structural Materials and Sizing
- Design Variables
- Spacing of support columns
- Size of support columns
- Column section shape
- Evaluators
- Diameter of columns (based on Euler buckling)
- Total steel volume
- Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
- Sections with more buckling capacity will also have larger area (more steel)
- Design Decision 3: Number of Columns Used
- Design Variables
- Number of columns
- Evaluators
- Number of columns
- Total steel volume used
- Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
- More columns would reduce the usable space in the tent but would decrease the size of each column
Step 2 - Generative Design Study
- For this study I chose to use two columns to support the tent. I used the following inputs and outputs to keep the generative design consistent:
- Inputs:
- Height for Column 1
- Height for Column 2
- Location for Column 1
- Location for Column 2
- Outputs:
- Total area under the tent structure
- Total steel volume used
- To start the design process, I created a framework to take a surface and “drape” it over a given point in space (see the images below)
- After this was done, an evaluator was created to size the columns based on their heights
- Next, an evaluator was added to compute the area under the tent structure:
- Next, the generative design analysis was conducted.
Step 3 - Generative Design Study Results
- For the generative design analysis, 20 generations of 20 populations was run. The results can be seen below.
- Unfortunately, there was a fairly linear correlation between the area under the tent and the total steel volume required, as can be seen by the near-horizontal lines on the left-hand side of the generative design plot. Because of this, I chose the most negatively-sloped line to be one of the more optimal designs, as this represents a higher tent volume with a lower amount of required steel. Additionally, there does seem to be a correlation between tent volume and location of columns, although this relationship is not explicitly represented from these graphs, it does appear that many of the higher performing outcomes have columns located in more central positions, but still separated slightly. It may not be too surprising to find that this “optimal” shape looks like what many may have intuitively thought of when placing two columns to support a tent structure, however, without running this analysis, I would not have been able to confidently say that there was not a more optimal column placement hiding somewhere.
The total workspace can be seen below. The blue and purple groups are the groups corresponding to the creation of the tent surface while the green nodes are related to calculation of the design quantities. Additionally, the pink are inputs and the orange are outputs.
