The Development of the Laboratory Concept Design Assistant
Hugo Sheward, Georgia Institute of Technology
This presentation will provide information on the development of design assistances for Preliminary Concept Design (PCD), and will describe the development of computational means for embedding engineering expertise in contemporary building information modeling (BIM) tools. Three areas of knowledge treated include: embedding domain expertise heuristics into semantically rich building data models, implementing lightweight building performance analysis tools into computer-aided design applications as a method to enhance the decision making process in PCD, and automating building design morphology derivation for the purpose of engineering design estimation in parametric cost estimates.
The tool described is implemented and tested in the domain of PCD of laboratories, particularly in the area of ventilation systems performance. Many of the design decisions taken during PCD, such as the definition of the spatial layout and therefore the spatial adjacency structure of the building, affect the performance of the ventilation system, and, as a direct consequence, a large percentage of the energy performance of the entire facility.
The Laboratory Preliminary Design Assistant (LPDA) tool incorporates building energy performance estimation in early stages of design where collaboration between architects and engineers is not well tailored for the process. This collaboration is affected by the speed of design changes, which makes the use of traditional building simulation tools hard due to the complexity of traditional HVAC simulation tools and the fact that they can take several hours to provide any feedback to designers.
For the implementation of the LPDA, two pieces of contemporary technologies have been selected; first, the rich objects semantics provided by BIM, which can support the analysis of multiple spatial relationships and their associated attributes, and, second, the estimation of engineering data by using simplified calculations instead of traditional building simulation tools, which has been demonstrated to be well suited for sensitivity/feasibility studies and new buildings in design stage.
The presentation concentrates on the implementation and operation of the LPDA functionality. The three areas of operation will be the core of the presentation, including the operation of the automated semantic enhancement of the building model, the estimation of ventilation systems requirements and overall performance, and the building system morphological solver and subsequent user feedback.
Hugo Sheward is a professional architect with three major degrees in architecture. A design computation Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology, his research work has concentrated in the development of BIM technologies. Mr. Sheward is particularly interested in the development of design performance evaluation tools for early stages of design.
Mr. Sheward has worked in the development of design tools and software specification for the United States General Services Administration and for the implementation of BIM tools for the purpose of laboratory design. His current work focuses in the development of automation of ventilation systems performance estimation for early stages of laboratory design.