Structural design in an automated building system

Structural design of buildings has proven particularly difficult to automate. Parametric templates are too limited to be practicable, and pure AI-based approaches have found little application in design offices. This paper presents ‘Intelligent Parametric Templates’ (IPT) for structural design within an Automated Building System. It demonstrates that, for rectangular plan building types, comprehensive automation of general and detailed structural design is feasible. The software ‘knowledge modules’ that were developed deal with rectangular buildings. IPTs for two complete slab solutions have been implemented.