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Building information modeling (BIM) has already brought the role of building design to the next level—and computation has taken it one level higher. Dana De Filippi, a computational designer at SmithGroup, takes Autodesk Revit users to a new level by teaching them Autodesk Dynamo Player, Autodesk’s programming language that automates workflows which were previously laborious. Dana teaches Autodesk Revit users at SmithGroup the power of Dynamo and has also taught Autodesk Revit users at large, such as when she presented "Automating Occupancy: A Smarter Way" to a class of 100 at Autodesk University 2018.
Dana graduated from Virginia Tech in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design and was trained in Autodesk Revit BIM software during her internship with AECOM in 2008-2009. She also has extensive experience in BIM implementations and training/consulting and has worked at Microdesk, HOK and Northern Virginia Community College.
Today, Dana has stepped up her expertise and is now a computational designer at the esteemed multi-disciplinary firm SmithGroup, where she has worked for more than four years. She is also a member of the Dell Inside Circle (#DellInsideCircle), a group of social media influencers who, supplied with Dell Precision workstation technology featuring Intel Xeon processors and NVIDIA RTXTM GPUs, seem only too willing to showcase their talent and accomplishments on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok.
What does a computational designer, such as Dana, do exactly? The answer is that they help design teams and their software work smarter. In this case, she is utilizing computational design software such as Dynamo to make Autodesk Revit users more productive by giving them tools that are very intuitive to keep their processes more efficient.
To provide some background, computational design typically merges design techniques with computational techniques that often involve coding and algorithms that analyze the steps of a particular process so you can automate that result and incorporate it into your workflow.
Computational design and generative design tools became popular in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry when Bentley Systems introduced GenerativeComponents, a parametric modeling/computational design tool in the early 2000’s, followed by a commercial release in 2007. Rhino also introduced its own computational design tool, Grasshopper in 2007.
Autodesk has its own solutions, and in 2013 announced they had combined their DesignScript programming language—developed by GenerativeComponents developer Robert Aish, who joined Autodesk in 2008—with its Dynamo visual programming software, which they acquired.
Today, Dynamo is a coding program that essentially allows you to get into the Autodesk Revit API and is built into Autodesk Revit. With Dynamo, Autodesk Revit users can customize their building information workflows. For example, using Dynamo, you can work with enhanced BIM capabilities in Autodesk Revit. Together, Dynamo and Autodesk Revit can be used to model and analyze complex geometries, automate repetitive processes, minimize errors and export data to Excel and other programs otherwise not supported by Autodesk Revit. Getting back to the dynamic Dana and her use of Dynamo specifically, she creates the code and has her team utilize the code through Dynamo Player, a simpler interface for end users to run Dynamo scripts.
SmithGroup has 1,300 employees with 15 offices in U.S. and China, and is a multi-disciplinary firm with MEP civil, structural, architectural, interior design and landscape disciplines.
Dana works with those disciplines out of the Washington, D.C., office training them not only in Autodesk Revit and Dynamo but also in how get the most efficient workflow.
“I really do focus on a higher level. Getting into the nitty-gritty. For example, working with electrical engineers on how to translate diagrams to electrical panels and transformers within the Revit model, and on how to make that process much more efficient. Also working with interior designers on how to develop their material legends and schedules and understanding a much more complex problem in terms of workflow,” she says.
“I would say data is probably the biggest thing. Working with those groups, making sure that these workflows are intuitive, that they actually do solve the problem at hand and not create additional problems.”
One of her areas of specialization is with occupancy calculations. During one of her earlier positions at the architecture firm Shalom Baranes Associates in Washington D.C., she worked as an Autodesk Revit manager, focused on life safety and occupancy calculations and streamlining those workflows.
She explained how during that time, architects, designers and fire protection engineers, for example, would take the data from Autodesk Revit and put it in Excel spreadsheets for occupancy calculations. “So essentially, it's an area of the space that is divided by a load factor.” she says.
“What I figured out is that we could build that into our Revit template, have all those numbers do their action in the background and keep the user, the designer, the architect, whomever, from having to translate all of that information out to Excel, keeping it there within Revit.”
She says the process was a bit easier at Shalom Baranes Associates, who only practiced in D.C., because they only had one code to comply with—the international building code (IBC) of the District of Columbia—compared to SmithGroup, who has offices nationwide. This meant she had to come up with additional solutions to make the system smarter at SmithGroup, where they use additional codes such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).
What she did was automate the process so users would not have to populate the spreadsheets by hand where Dynamo would do it. That way, Autodesk Revit users would not have to manually transcribe or translate it into another program and the data would “live” in Autodesk Revit, she explains. And if a load factor changed, say if a design got bigger or smaller, she had to ensure that the calculations were smart enough to update automatically. Another key part of her job was making sure the end user understood this process and that it would solve the problem at hand.
When asked about the computer power required for Dynamo, Dana says that running Dynamo is a computer intensive process, especially when it comes to machine learning and deep thinking.
She explains, however, that with Dynamo you can set it to automatic or manual mode and when it is in automatic mode when a change is made in Autodesk Revit, Dynamo will constantly be looking for changes in the background. “That is 100 percent very computer intensive,” she says. “Essentially every time you’re making a change with the Revit model, Dynamo is analyzing that change.”
What she does is have her Autodesk Revit users interface through Dynamo Player to run Dynamo scripts. “Dynamo player is what I refer to as ‘run and done.’ You run the script and then it's done,” she says.
It is apparent that Dana finds her Dell workstation an indispensable tool for the demands of computational design workflows. Computational design leverages a broad range of software solutions that require heavy duty workstations. Thin and light notebook computers may look stylish, but they lack the professional-grade CPUs, RTXTM GPUs and the banks of memory found in bona fide workstations. Workstations alone can do the number-crunching required for rendering, simulation and computational design that are increasingly being asked of the architect. Dell and NVIDIA gave Dana a Precision 5560 mobile workstation that delivers the high-end performance needed for computational design. With a powerful Intel Xeon CPU, an NVIDIA RTXTM A3000 GPU with plenty of VRAM, she can focus on the design process to produce a higher quality result that basic machines simply can't accomplish. Being able to do these tasks locally, rather than having to find servers offsite—such as those belonging to render farms and cloud computing services—can not only empower the architect by providing them the freedom to explore more design options, but can also reduce the time to complete a project by eliminating having to constantly queue up jobs and download results.
While SmithGroup does use the cloud for certain processes, they run Autodesk Revit and Dynamo locally. For instance, SmithGroup has all their projects stored in BIM 360 (now Autodesk Build) construction management software.
SmithGroup also has a visualization group that focuses on 3D printing, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), and similar types of emerging technologies. Not only is SmithGroup using and investing in cutting-edge technology, but they also invest heavily in specialists like Dana, in addition to data scientists, software engineers and education specialists.
“I think one of the beautiful things about SmithGroup is that we employ a number of people that you wouldn't necessarily think an architectural engineering firm would,” she says.
“So of course, having computers that can allow our data scientists to run surveys and Power BI [data analytics software] and do all of these things in addition to what you would think about in the traditional sense of just AutoCAD and Revit… The fact that they're willing to hire someone like me, a computational designer that thinks about how to make people more efficient in their day-to-day workflows, really just speaks to the fact that they want to stay innovative and on the cutting-edge of technology.”
Dana is all about staying on the cusp of technology. What’s next on her and SmithGroups’ radar? She is definitely excited and in the know about advances in technology. When asked about Autodesk Spacemaker, a new solution for architects to create 3D massing models of a site using automatic data sets, she says SmithGroup was well familiar with it.
She says her team a few years back had already built a “Spacemaker”-type system where the design team came up with a program in Excel.
She actually had an example of Spacemaker on her laptop, and she explains how it allows her to look at different floor plans and layouts in a much more data-centric way. “We as the designer put in the information that's important to us as designers, developers, clients, et cetera. And then it spits out a bunch of information for us. Basically, it lets the computer take the data and really lets the data lead the way. We're still there for the computer as to what data matters though…”
Her hope is that solutions such as Spacemaker can help with the disparity between design and construction documentation in the industry. “I hope we can bridge that gap between the early form-finding and analytics of the building, and then later transitioning to the actual construction of that building. I think that that would be extremely advantageous.”
As for the future of computational design, she says there will be some resistance from the industry, similar to how there was in going from 2D to BIM, for example. But she sees the evolution of computational design having major benefits, similar to the way AutoCAD transformed drafting.
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