Structural engineering knowledge can be of significant importance to the architectural design team during the early design phase. However, architects and engineers do not typically work together during the conceptual phase; in fact, structural engineers are often called late into the process. As a result, updates in the design are more difficult and time-consuming to complete. At the same time, there is a lost opportunity for better design exploration guided by structural feedback. In general, the earlier in the design process the iteration happens, the greater the benefits in cost efficiency and informed de-sign exploration, which can lead to higher-quality creative results. In order to facilitate an informed exploration in the early design stage, we suggest the automation of fundamental structural engineering tasks and introduce ApproxiFramer, a Machine Learning-based system for the automatic generation of structural layouts from building plan sketches in real-time. The system aims to assist architects by presenting them with feasible structural solutions during the conceptual phase so that they proceed with their design with adequate knowledge of its structural implications. In this paper, we describe the system and evaluate the performance of a proof-of-concept implementation in the domain of orthogonal, metal, rigid structures. We trained a Convolutional Neural Net to iteratively generate structural design solutions for sketch-level building plans using a synthetic dataset and achieved an average error of 2.2% in the predicted positions of the columns.
翻译:建筑结构工程知识在早期设计阶段对建筑设计团队可能具有重要意义,但建筑师和工程师通常在概念阶段不会一起工作;事实上,结构工程师往往被叫到这个过程的较晚阶段;因此,设计更新更加困难,而且需要花费时间才能完成;同时,失去了在结构反馈指导下进行更好的设计探索的机会;一般而言,迭代发生的时间越早,设计过程越早,成本效率和知情地取消设计勘探的效益就越大,从而可能导致更高质量的创造性成果。为了便利在早期设计阶段进行知情的探索,我们建议基本结构工程任务的自动化,并采用ApproFramer,即机械学习系统,用于从实时建筑计划草图中自动生成结构布局。该系统旨在协助建筑师在概念阶段提出可行的结构解决方案,以便他们在设计过程中充分了解其结构影响。我们在本文件中描述了系统,并评估了在结构设计领域进行校准的系统工程定位,并引入了ApproxFramer(AppyFramer),即机械结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构,我们培训了在结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构结构上建立方面的系统。