One reason to adopt Computational Design as a problem-solving methodology is the ability to do more with what you have. When it comes to starting a project, the same tasks are often performed many times throughout the year so it only makes sense to explore how one may automate that process.
When I was asked why I started exploring the concepts of Computational Design, I would often say that it was to "do more with less". I was driven by the need to automate mundane tasks to free up time and be more productive. However, I later realized that the phrase "do more with less" had a negative connotation and that the goal shouldn't be to replace team members with automation solutions. Instead, the goal should be to maximize their efforts by allowing them to “do more with what they have”.
Firms run many projects each year, and while each project is unique, there are often similarities between them all. A standard company template may be used to start , but each project often requires a slightly different template, which often results in larger templates over time. As our templates become too large, they tend to become less efficient resulting in slower production output. For example, metal buildings require different families and details compared to wood buildings, and healthcare facilities have different sheets compared to K-12 facilities. This is where Computational Design comes into play.
With a few clicks in a user-friendly interface, a standard template can be transformed into a fully functional project with all the required views sheets, families, and content to hit the ground running.
I’ve said many times that I do not believe a majority of those in our industry came into it because of the technology. While there may be those technology lovers out there, a majority of our industry came because of their love of design , engineering , building , among other reasons. They have been forced to use the technology for one reason or another, and as a result , anything that we put out there should be simple and easy to use. It should be so easy to use that its almost like it isn’t even there so that our professionals can focus on why they come to work every day.
To gain adoption of any tool that is created its important that its easy to use and easy to find. If individuals must search for the solution or jump through a bunch of hoops to accomplish the end goal, then they will be less likely to use the tool. The user interface and user experience is as important as the tool itself.
Anything that we can do natively in Revit we can automate and then some. When deciding what to automate for any Computational Design solution its important to focus on those repetitive tasks that require a lot of manual user input and are also primed for user error. Also , think about what the variations may look like and how will they differ. If you intend to start with a company standard template , what needs to be added to make it ready for your project specific requirements.
This example goes through a project startup tool that I built and highlights many of those key areas of automation focus.
Content by parameter: Many firms have various studios that make up the overall firm or perhaps they tend to work on one project typology but there are variations within it. Think wood and steel buildings. Being able to trigger a set of automations based on a parameter is an important step to building a fully functional automation project startup tool.
Level Creation : When designing an automation solution its important to think through the sequence of steps and how one may impact another. If you want to be able to create views in Revit you’ll need to make sure that you have your levels in place to create them. Whether its through a user interface, or reading from an excel spreadsheet, automating this task is another easy way to jump start our project.
View and Sheet Creation: Creation of views can be one of the many painstaking exercises of setting up a Revit project. While many of these will get created as the project progresses, we all know that there are often very standard views and sheets associated with every project. Leveraging excel for cataloging what views and sheets are to be created is a popular method because it’s a medium that many of us are familiar with.
Detail View from Library: It has become a common practice to have an external project house common details for staff team members to pull from as they develop their project. Another popular project startup method is leveraging that parameter at the beginning to decide what details are required and pull them into the project.
Families from Library: Like the details, families can also be loaded in via our project startup tool and are based on the project related parameters specified at the beginning.
Interested in how you may be able to automate your project startup? Have additional ideas of what we can add to such a solution? Reach out and let us know what you think.
This is just one example of how we can leverage Computational Design, Dynamo and Python specifically for this example , to automate our project startup and adhere to company standards.
