Analysis and Design of Shells using visual Programming

The construction industry, through the development of the building information modeling technology and, in combination with thin surfaces, aims to create elegant structures and minimize their cost. The development of structural design processes for complex geometries in a unified environment, characterized by ease of use and debugging of results, is one of the most important goals. Thus, not only will there be immediate information for all those involved in the implementation of projects, but also their applicants will be able to cause changes on the spot, so that ultimately, the pre-construction design will be accurate and safe.

The basis of this thesis is the structural information contained in the simulations of the surface structures analyzed. These are analyzed through code development based on shell theories and simulated using the finite element method. This leads to error-free analyses that extract accurate results that serve as a requirement for the design of the structures. The key feature of the presented work is the establishment of cooperation protocols and a niche pipeline that integrates the three environments, i.e., architectural design, analysis and structural design.

To achieve the aforementioned objectives, two workflows are investigated. The first is to design the structure entirely within a visual programming environment and from there to export it to a design environment for further processing. The second begins from the design of the structure in the design environment and next exporting this it into the visual programming environment to perform the analysis, structural design and time scheduling.