skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Interactive Architectural Design with Diverse Solution Exploration
In architectural design, architects explore a vast amount of design options to maximize various performance criteria, while adhering to specific constraints. In an effort to assist architects in such a complex endeavour, we propose IDOME, an interactive system for computer-aided design optimization. Our approach balances automation and control by efficiently exploring, analyzing, and filtering space layouts to inform architects' decision-making better. At each design iteration, IDOME provides a set of alternative building layouts which satisfy user-defined constraints and optimality criteria concerning a user-defined space parametrization. When the user selects a design generated by IDOME, the system performs a similar optimization process with the same (or different) parameters and objectives. A user may iterate this exploration process as many times as needed. In this work, we focus on optimizing built environments using architectural metrics by improving the degree of visibility, accessibility, and information gaining for navigating a proposed space. This approach, however, can be extended to support other kinds of analysis as well. We demonstrate the capabilities of IDOME through a series of examples, performance analysis, user studies, and a usability test. The results indicate that IDOME successfully optimizes the proposed designs concerning the chosen metrics and offers a satisfactory experience for users with minimal training.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1723869 1955404 1703883 1747778
PAR ID:
10144757
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
ISSN:
1077-2626
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 1
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Stress, edge crossings, and crossing angles play an important role in the quality and readability of graph drawings. Most standard graph drawing algorithms optimize one of these criteria which may lead to layouts that are deficient in other criteria. We introduce an optimization framework, Stress-Plus-X (SPX), that simultaneously optimizes stress together with several other criteria: edge crossings, minimum cross- ing angle, and upwardness (for directed acyclic graphs). SPX achieves results that are close to the state-of-the-art algorithms that optimize these metrics individually. SPX is flexible and extensible and can optimize a subset or all of these criteria simultaneously. Our experimental analysis shows that our joint optimization approach is successful in drawing graphs with good performance across readability criteria. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract Nanophotonic freeform design has the potential to push the performance of optical components to new limits, but there remains a challenge to effectively perform optimization while reliably enforcing design and manufacturing constraints. We present Neuroshaper, a framework for freeform geometric parameterization in which nanophotonic device layouts are defined using an analytic neural network representation. Neuroshaper serves as a qualitatively new way to perform shape optimization by capturing multi-scalar, freeform geometries in an overparameterized representation scheme, enabling effective optimization in a smoothened, high dimensional geometric design space. We show that Neuroshaper can enforce constraints and topology manipulation in a manner where local constraints lead to global changes in device morphology. We further show numerically and experimentally that Neuroshaper can apply to a diversity of nanophotonic devices. The versatility and capabilities of Neuroshaper reflect the ability of neural representation to augment concepts in topological design. 
    more » « less
  3. Spatial regionalization is the process of combining a collection of spatial polygons into contiguous regions that satisfy user-defined criteria and objectives. Numerous techniques for spatial regionalization have been proposed in the literature, which employs varying methods for region growing, seeding, optimization, and enforce different user-defined constraints and objectives. This paper introduces a scalable unified system for addressing seeding spatial regionalization queries efficiently. The proposed system provides a usable and scalable framework that employs a wide-range of existing spatial regionalization techniques and allows users to submit novel combinations of queries that have not been previously explored. This represents a significant step forward in the field of spatial regionalization as it provides a robust platform for addressing different regionalization queries. The system is mainly composed of three components: query parser, query planner, and query executor. Preliminary evaluations of the system demonstrate its efficacy in efficiently addressing various regionalization queries. 
    more » « less
  4. When designing a software system, architects make a series of design decisions that directly impact the system’s quality. Recent studies have shown that the number of available design alternatives grows rapidly with system size, creating an enormous space of intertwined design concerns. This paper presents eQual, a novel model-driven technique for simulation-based assessment of architectural designs that helps architects understand and explore the effects of their decisions. We demonstrate that eQual effectively explores massive spaces of design alternatives and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art approaches, without being cumbersome for architects to use. 
    more » « less
  5. Today, there is a growing demand for housing complexes due to rapid urbanization in major metropolitan areas. While architects must meet new sustainability standards, they are also expected to demonstrate creative solutions for humanizing mass housing for the well-being of residents. This paper proposes an intuitive platform for users to visually study possible housing complex designs and their potential performance in energy use intensity (EUI), environmental, and some financial criteria based on preliminary sketches drawn by users. Before users start sketching, our program auto-generates basic layouts with performance results. With this knowledge, users will be able to visually grasp intrinsic relationships between built forms and performance characteristics and reflect on their new design. Our goal is to provide a platform that enables designers to effectively incorporate qualitative contributions from early exploratory stages into advanced design stages, allowing architects to focus on more creative solutions. 
    more » « less