Much of the early work around generative design at Autodesk was focused on manufactured products. Increasingly, though, it is being applied to design problems in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). Autodesk Research—mainly through its New York-based architectural studio, The Living—is exploring how one can use generative design to solve a variety of problems in the AEC space. Recent examples include Project Discover, where survey data from Autodesk's Toronto-based employees was used to help choose the layout for our new office in the MaRS Discovery District. Generative design was also used in the design of the Autodesk University 2017 exhibit hall. During this session we'll take a look at the tools available from Autodesk to apply generative design in the AEC industry. And we'll show how to get started with generative design by driving Dynamo with Refinery, Autodesk's new optimization engine.

Unlike generative design for manufacturing, generative design for architecture requires the incorporation of the user’s unique design intents and ideas into the generative model. As most of our work shows—from the Autodesk office at MaRS to the Autodesk University exhibit hall layout, and from urban developments in the Netherlands to housing complexes in Japan—each project’s output looks different because each geometric system has been developed as a combination of the designer’s intent and reusable geometric tools. This session will show how to approach design problems through the generative design framework (problem formulation) with a focus on how to incorporate design intents in the form of geometric systems (model parameterization). Through Dynamo and Refinery, we’ll take a look at and customize a variety of custom geometric tools and test them in real-world case studies: from subdivision logic for office and urban neighborhoods to automated massing strategies and building siting algorithms.

This product briefing will showcase the latest advances in Dynamo, Dynamo Player, and Generative Design in Revit. Come learn from Autodesk AEC Computational Design & Automation product managers about where they've been focusing their efforts and what is on the roadmap for future releases. We will show how we have improved the authoring experience in Dynamo and the running experience in both Dynamo Player and Generative Design in Revit using real world examples to showcase these tools. This briefing will demonstrate the value that Dynamo and Generative Design bring to the design process. We will show how customers are using the tools to automate their workflows and design explorations in their projects. We will cover the product principles that we use to prioritize new work and future direction. Finally, we will address the future of the product, where we will be investing, and our road map for achieving the future vision.

Generative design is a framework for combining digital computation and human creativity to achieve results that would not otherwise be possible. It involves the integration of a rule-based geometric system, a series of measurable goals, and a system for automatically generating, evaluating, and evolving a very large number of design options. This approach offers many benefits for designing buildings and cities–including managing complexity, optimising for specific criteria, incorporating a large amount of input from past projects and current requests, navigating trade-offs based on real data, structuring discussion among stakeholders about design features and project objectives, offering transparency about project assumptions, and offering a “live model” for post-occupancy adaptation. The framework consists of 3 main components: 1) generate a wide design space of possible solutions through a bespoke geometry system; 2) evaluate each solution through measurable goals; 3) evolve generations of designs through evolutionary computation. Generative design is a flexible and scalable framework. It can be applied to a wide range of design problems and scales: from industrial components all the way to buildings and cities. In this session, we'll explore how generative design is being applied by Autodesk Research's The Living at a variety of scales, and how the Autodesk tools used by The Living (Dynamo and Refinery) can be used by customers to implement their own generative design workflows.

In the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, we are challenged to consider many design options, to find the fittest solution in the shortest time, and to be leaders in economic and sustainable designs. During this presentation, you’ll learn about how computational design techniques can help you improve your design process for buildings. In this class, you’ll discover how our products generate better outcomes for designs using computational and generative design techniques. You’ll get an overview of how ‘traditional" design improves with design automation, computational modeling, and generative design methods with Dynamo and Refinery. All of this will be taught using examples from the architectural, urban planning, and structural industry.

Project Discover was the original project that launched Autodesk's work around Generative Design for AEC, leading to the creation of Project Refinery, an optimization engine for Dynamo. It involved the generative design of Autodesk's new office in the MaRS district of Toronto, a showcase for using Generative Design for architectural layout. While this project pre-dated the latest Autodesk tools in this space, Autodesk Research embarked on Project Rediscover to go back and retrofit the original approach to work with Dynamo and Refinery. This session takes a close look at the Project Rediscover graph - which is now publicly available for anyone to load inside Dynamo - and how people might use similar techniques to implement their own Generative Design workflows.

Want to stay ahead of the curve when designing and marketing your sustainable infrastructure services? Generative Design will help you move the needle faster with your customers toward cleaner, safer, more reliable sources of energy. We’ll dive into platforms, concepts, and workflows that will help civil and environmental engineers design faster, optimize outcomes earlier to reduce project costs and schedules, deliver more value to their customers, and ultimately make a greater environmental impact. Discover how to rapidly optioneer and optimize to reduce overall design time and rework as well as manage the complexity of large datasets associated with solar and wind projects. We’ll cover workflows integrating Civil 3D, InfraWorks, Dynamo, and AEC Generative Design, familiarize you in geometric concepts for faster graphical and computational power, and demonstrate how Autodesk Consulting is funneling innovation into practice with various prototypes for sustainable design projects.

Generative design is the process of setting design parameters and then using computational analysis to come up with multiple solutions. It has been widely used in the manufacturing industry; it is also gaining more attention in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry in space design, sustainability studies, and urban planning. However, the construction industry has not fully invested in the power of generative design. With more contractors using BIM (Building Information Modeling) to deliver projects, more data is available and can be used to generate and manipulate outcomes. This class will focus on applications of generative design that optimize construction processes. We will present a background on generative design as well as case studies. The class will also show how to get started with generative design for construction using current technologies, including Dynamo. The digitization of today’s projects, along with the power of computation, creates the potential to facilitate construction processes and build better buildings.

What if you could come up with multiple options for a single design without drawing - designs that look and feel like your branded style, meet your specific requirements and are based on your most important criteria?  These designs might otherwise be impossible to create using traditional methods and certainly could not be done instantly.   Each design is built to your specific requirements of materials strength and cost allowing you to optimize your productivity and deliver your customers more options than they could ever dream of that meet their most critical needs.  Generative design harnesses massive computing power creating forms with precise amounts of material only where you need them -  achieving maximum performance - with little waste.  This workshop is designed to be interactive, providing you access to Industry leaders in Artificial Intelligence (AI) who will share their insights on the emerging capabilities and the advantages of generative design leveraging AI for AEC.

For years you’ve heard stories of companies utilizing generative design in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. While you want to embark on a similar journey, you may be paralyzed, unsure where to start. Fortunately, the fastest way to a destination is to follow in the footsteps of those ahead of you, and the Arcadis Generative Design POC Team is happy to lead the way. We’ll tell you how to avoid traps and plan for success in your generative evolution. No topic is too broad or off limits (well, except our source code). Conceptualization and planning, staffing and skill requirements, training needs and sources, tips and tricks, milestones and goals, pitfalls and traps—we’ll pull back the curtain and let you see how you, too, could produce a generative-design tool that will transform how you do business.

Learn about techniques and examples of computational design approaches used to generate, evaluate, evolve, and cycle through design processes.

Autodesk Research’s in-house architectural studio, The Living, is a pioneer in the application of generative-design technology. They have completed successful projects for Airbus—the famous bionic partition for the A320—and internal to Autodesk, including both the design of the new office in Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District and the exhibit hall layout for last year’s Autodesk University. In late 2016, The Living was approached by Van Wijnen, an innovative Dutch construction company interested in reinventing the way the firm built homes. Van Wijnen wanted to apply generative design at the urban scale, exploring possibilities around the layout of residential areas based on financial, sociological, or environmental metrics. Speakers from Autodesk Research will present the concept behind the project and details of the Dynamo-based tool that Van Wijnen uses for new layouts. Additionally, a speaker from Van Wijnen will talk about how the tool is used and has changed the way the firm approaches urban planning projects.

Autodesk Research’s in-house architectural studio, The Living, is a pioneer in the application of Generative Design technology. They have completed successful projects for Airbus – the famous bionic partition for the A320 – and internal to Autodesk, including both the design of the new office in the MaRS district of Toronto and the exhibit hall layout for last year’s Autodesk University. In late 2016, The Living was approached by Van Wijnen, an innovative Dutch construction company interested in reinventing the way they build homes. They wanted to apply Generative Design at the urban scale, exploring possibilities around the layout of residential areas based on financial, sociological or environmental metrics. Speakers from Autodesk Research will present the concept behind the project and details of the Dynamo-based tool that Van Wijnen uses for new layouts. A speaker from Van Wijnen will talk about how the tool is used and has changed the way they approach urban planning projects.