In this course, Brandon Gibbs walks you through the deconstruction of the Serpentine Wall. Brandon worked on this project while working at McCown Design. Brandon has a foundation at the Architectural Association with Patrik Schumacher of ZHA and Theo Spyropoulos of Minimaforms, and has continued to explore parametric design methods in architecture.

This course focusses on the whole workflow from design to standardizing to fabrication. It’s a great introduction of how to use parametric methods using Rhinoceros 3d and Grasshopper. You’ll learn how to apply these methods not just in design, but most importantly in the construction, documentation and fabrication process.

Brandon starts by explaining the notion of Parametric Design with some examples found in nature and the possible applications in design. The input for the wall will be a set of curves that will drive most of the generation of the individual members.

After setting up the creation of the various slats and rails which are controlled with a set of variables, Brandon explains how to add fabrication and construction constraints, like tolerances and additional extension lengths. To explain how to add a generative element to the wall, Brandon uses the sine formula to influence the different member lengths.

In the final part of the course, Brandon will show some common practices to keep your definition clean. This is especially helpful when revisiting old definitions. When using your design and 3d model for fabrication purposes, a standardization step must be included to account for construction demands and constraints. Brandon explains the importance of this and shows how to standardize the various elements of the wall before exporting. In the last step of the course, Brandon will show you a simple method to document important information about the wall to Microsoft Excel.

Check out his course here

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GO TO COURSE

Enter Håvard:
This course will cover basic interoperability between CAD and BIM systems Rhino and Revit, as applied to the design process of Schematic Design deliveries from Snøhetta on the new headquarters for Banque Libano-Française (BLF) in Beirut, Lebanon. The design team had more experience with CAD than BIM, and some of the facade and landscape was designed with non-standard geometries. At the same time we needed to coordinate the placement and nature of building data in a synchronized database both in-house and with collaborating architects and engineers. Therefore it made total sense for the team to work with both systems. We hope you enjoy learning about our design processes as much as we enjoyed developing them!

Scope of class
The scope is basic digital interoperability workflows; Rhino to Revit and back again. That means no automated parametric workflows, except those showcased in the last chapter
Schematic Design Phase; 1:200 and 1:250 outputs. No very detailed geometries.

Elements that this course will cover.

Setup
This chapter will cover setting up the most important file settings, like file formats, units, coordinate systems, orientation and export settings.

Revit to Rhino
This chapter covers basic export settings from Revit to DWG, setting up export views and how to bring geometries into Rhino using layers and work sessions.

Rhino to Revit – Part 1
In this chapter, we bring breps from Rhino to Revit using 3DM and SAT CAD Import. We look at how we can interact with the imported geometries and how we can display them in different ways, mimicking the behavior of materials.

Rhino to Revit – Part 2
In part two we introduce the concept of automated import of Rhino geometry in Revit with Dynamo and Spring Nodes. These scripts will auto-import SAT-files and make Revit families from them.

BLF Facade Buildup
In this chapter we apply the methods we learned about importing Rhino geometry to Revit in the first chapters by bringing in the facade structure, insulation, glass layers, frames and roof, and making them look good on 1:200 and 1:250 drawings.

BLF Facade Cladding
In this chapter we apply the methods we learned about automated import of SAT geometry with Dynamo by mass-importing the double-curved stone claddings on the cover of the facade and displaying them nicely in Revit.

Material for Future Work
In the final view-only chapter we talk about content for future work in the realms of live linking data between the visual programming interfaces of Rhino and Revit, and how these methods can be used to automatically create and manage vast amounts of BIM elements and data from parametric design. The showcase looks at an iteration of the auditorium ceiling on levels 3 and 4, an iteration that was later discarded.

UPDATE:This course will is now available at your library .

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Some of the benefits:

Whether you’re a team of two or thousands, we will create a custom plan that adapts to your needs.

Employees might move on, but knowledge stays. With ThinkParametric for organizations, you make sure that no matter what changes happen within your organization the skills and knowledge remain accessible at all time 24/7 everywhere and from any device.

Avoid the hassles and added costs of having to develop your own IT solutions to implement training, we take care of all of that and allow you to focus on what matters.

You’ll have the ability to manage your whole organization by adding and removing members and also adding administrators that can help oversee your training initiatives.

With your organization’s dashboard, you’ll have the ability to stay on top of everything that happens within your organization. You can track all your members activities and progress either individually or collectively.

If you or someone in your organization would like to know a little bit more, don’t hesitate to get in touch by sending an email to hello@thinkaparametric. Please share with us the size of your team and what you are interested in learning.

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As part of our Digital Fabrication learning path, we have a new course on IVY plugin for Grasshopper. Ivy is a plugin that uses Graph Theory concepts for mesh geometry analysis.

On this course, you’ll learn the basics of Graph Theory and how it relates in the way that IVY works. We’ll cover the basic workflow of the plugin and explain the concept of IVY’s MeshGraph which is an abstract construct that combines the geometric characteristics of the mesh with sets of linked data containers.

You learn the different ways in which we can use Ivy to analyze our meshes, once we cover the different ways to do this we’ll cover how we can perform various types of segmentation that may adapt to our design purposes.

Then we’ll learn how we can use this segmentations to unroll our meshes into strips. We will also show you how to add and create your own custom flaps and add them to your mesh strips to send them to digital fabrication process like laser cutting.

Finally, we’ll review everything learned and apply it to an architectural design exercise by trying creating an installation piece inspired by the work on minimal surfaces of Marc Fornes.

This is an excellent course if you are interested in how you can rationalize the complex topological geometries you can achieve with meshes and translate them into elements you can fabricate. This course is available HERE.

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David will start by doing some quick checks from the latest 3D model received from the client. We will remodel some assets that are going to be promptly in our interior render view. After that, we’ll dive into creating the different textures and UV-maps needed to create a photo-realistic result. Depending on the visibility of an asset in the scene we will create high detail textures using a variety of techniques.

Ones everything is set up, we will go over the lighting our scene. A default Corona sun is used and an HDRI-texture. David will go over some tricks to create lighting that is the best fit for this interior render. David will explain the settings used in Corona Renderer, our rendering plugin, and the various render elements we need to render for our final course Post-Production.

This course will be out in the coming days

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Architectural design optimization specialist Judyta Cichocka will walk you through this Karamba 101 course. She is a co-founder of Parametric Support and co-author of Silvereye an optimization solver we will use in this course to optimize our structure.

We will start by going briefly over the installation process and the different licenses that exist. For this course, the free version is sufficient, which you can download here. We will then go over the six basic steps needed to setup a Karamba Statical Model. This minimal setup is always required and you can use this base definition in all your future uses of Karamba.

Next, we will create our first load case scenario using two simple beams and a point load. We will go over the different components of Karamba, their inputs and outputs, and what they all mean.

In the second part of the course, we will create a simple canopy we will use for our structural analysis. The canopy consists of a spaceframe and a cover we can control parametrically. When we’ve specified the supports, materials and load cases, we will perform a structural analysis on the structure. We will take a critical look at the results, like maximum displacement, resulting force of gravity, and internal elastic energy. We will also visualize the results to get a better understanding of how our structure behaves under our loads.

The last part will consist of using Silvereye to optimize the structure. Silvereye works similar to Galapagos and is pretty straightforward to use. We’ll use the results from the previous lesson – maximum displacement, and internal elastic energy – as our fitness values to optimize.

This course will be out in the coming days

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As Grasshopper models have become an industry standard, there is the need of being able to control and update the vast amount of information these generate and navigate the increasing complexity these produce.

Nowadays there is no way to create a single model that can store or handle all the information necessary for a project also for computing performance reasons these wouldn´t be desirable. If instead we allocate a project´s information through different models and have an efficient way of connecting one with another, which not only allows us to interact with our information but also implement changes efficiently and propagate these changes across all our models in a secure and manageable way. This is what distributed data models with Rhino Objects allows and what Elefront is all about.

Here is Ramon Van Der Heijden explaining what Elefront is and why you might consider implementing it on your projects.

On this Elefront course, Ramon will walk you through the whole workflow of how Elefornt works by creating a highly detailed glassing facade system, in a similar way that Elefront was used in the Morpheus Hotel by Zaha Hadid ( more info here).

Among the things, you´ll learn are the following ones:

• Understanding the basic workflow and components of Elefront
• Baking and adding attributes to geometries
• Adding multiple attributes
• Referencing Geometries
• Advanced filtering of elements by user attributes
• Mapping data in geometries
• Assigning and inheriting attributes from host geometries
• Automating Construction drawings
• Detailing our model

You´ll learn how to map data into your geometries.

Use the Autograph plug-in to clean-up and organize your definitions.

Automate hundreds of fully detailed construction drawings.

Learn how to add and automate high level of detail to your models.

This course will be available in a couple of weeks at your Library.

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Check out this course here

ForeGround Visuals – David Guardado

In this Architectural Visualization course, we’re going to take a look at the workflow of 3D modeling one of our assets into very high detail. The asset we’re going to focus on is our sofa, the same sofa we ended with in the previous course.

The position and direction of the camera is important as we will see. It will determine what we need to model to a very high detail and which objects can be left more low-resolution. We’re going to start by collecting some additional information on how textile behaves in real life before we start exporting our low poly model from 3ds Max to ZBrush.

ZBrush is a perfect software for adding fine detail to a 3d model. It will feel quite natural using this program, as you will see. It uses various brushes to sculpt and mold your 3d model.

In here, we’re going to add all the detail necessary for a realistic representation of our sofa.

When we’re done adding detail to the parts that matter from the couch, we’ll export all the necessary UV maps for an accurate representation of the sofa when we start the rendering phase.
We’ll use a program called Substance Designer to make this happen. Substance Designer works great with ZBrush and 3ds Max and is perfect to accurately create materials needed for the next part in this tutorial series: 3D production.

Check out this course here

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We’re excited to release the first part of our Architectural Visualization Series: Image Planning. The next parts will be; 3D Texturing and UV Mapping; 3D Production and Rendering; and finally Post Production. This series will encompass the whole workflow, from start to finish, of creating a stunning interior image using a variety of software. Just to name a few; Rhinoceros, 3ds Max, Corona Renderer, ZBrush, Nuke and Adobe Photoshop.

Teaching these series will be all-round badass and good friend, David Guardado. David has over ten years of experience in the field as a 3D visualizer and has extensive knowledge of all the aspects of visualization.
ForeGround Visuals – David Guardado

In the first part, Image Planning, we will start with receiving the necessary information from the client. David explains what is important to ask for and gives you some helpful tips to minimize miscommunications between the client and you.

After this, we’re going to look at some useful online resources to get a sense of the kind of image we’re going to create in the end. We’ll focus our attention on lighting, camera angles, different materials, and composition. Besides 2D references, David will also show where to find online resources for 3D models, that may complete our scene.

We’ll conclude with creating some white renders for our client taking cues from the reference images. These renders are important as they will show the first glimpse of the final result. Especially the camera position and direction are necessary to fix, to move forward. We will combine these renders with some material references into a collage to present to the client.

Assuming our fictional client approved the collage, we’ll perform a geometry check of the 3D model. We’ll export our model from Sketchup to Rhinoceros, and in Rhino we’ll conduct the geometry cleanup. When we have a clean model, we’ll export it to 3ds Max, and in Max, we’re going to add detail to the parts that are visible in our renders.

In the final part, we’re going to remodel and add detail to some elements that are visible in the render, in our case a sofa. Rebuilding the sofa into a low-poly version is necessary for easy UV mapping and smoothly applying textures.

This course will be available soon, please keep an eye on our newsletter

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