Generate closed volumes from building model

Grasshopper
1

Hi all,

I’m sure there are much more advanced methods of achieving this out there already, but I’ve been thinking about ways to generate closed volumes representing the rooms of a building based on imported rhino geometry (possibly imported from Sketchup or otherwise?) The aim of this would be to generate the basic volumes of the building, optimise them in gh in whatever way desired and then incorporate this to the design.

The first part of the question is in what ways could this be done, and secondly what sort of attributes would the base rhino/sketchup/other geometry need to allow this to happen? My initial thinking was to intersect a plane (say at 1m above the xy plane), project the intersection to the base and ceiling planes and then create the closed volumes from that, but as soon as ceiling levels vary, additional floors are added in, walls recess for windows and doors, etc I start to get confused.

I’m hoping to try and work through this problem myself, but any suggestions/ideas or other examples of this or ways in which you would approach this would be appreciated. As I already said, am sure this sort of thing must have been tackled before but just haven’t been able to find it as of yet!

2

Before anything read this all time classic :

BTW: It is most unlikely that you can do anything realistic without extensive knowledge of coding. Plus since in fact we are talking BIM matters … R/GH are not the apps to consider for that type of stuff.

3

Hmm, I guess I had never drawn the comparisons to softwre like Revit etc. When you put it like that it does seem that grasshopper is not the software to use here.

PS. Thanks for the reading list!

4

BTW: In order to start walking the walk on that matter you’ll need:

  1. A team fluent in C#.
  2. A BIM AEC “base” (AECOSim or Revit + Generative Components or Dynamo).
  3. A control RDBMS the likes of ProjectWise.
  4. Years of coding (and dollars).
  5. Karma (and cigars).

When you are in the middle of the walk you’ll realize that all these are 100% off-topic: contemporary times are NOT after the rational (to be exact: a computer assisted rational). Look around you to get the gist of my meaning.

Moral: Don’t start something that has questionable future (if any at all) and/or demand (ditto). Maybe in another life (in another planet).