Can this be right?

Is a F.A.R. of almost 1,200 too much? Is a 17,000ft (3.2 mile) building too tall? Is 2.1 million square feet too big of a footprint for a single building? So far our zoning rules do not seem to preclude these outcomes:

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(click here for the PDF version)

There are clearly some issues with this proposal:

1) 85% efficiency of occupiable area versus built area might be overly optimistic in a structure over 3 miles tall.

2) Reserving a half-dozen floors, each with 10' ceilings, for open-air greenspace probably won't work, considering the fact that natural daylight will only reach about 5% of the area.

3) Open greenspace on the roof? At over 3 miles high? Only if supplmental oxygen systems are available. Some more info on altitude vs. oxygen. Then there's the issue of being above the clouds, though that would only help with allowing more sunlight :)

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4) Proximity to airport could be an issue. I still haven't found airspace maps for aiports yet, but I know they exist. Perhaps they just aren't published online, or for free...

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As for the structural integrity of such a tall, tall thing, I am not convinced. I wonder what PvB would say about it...

Es Mejor Tarde Que Nunca

Finally finished the poster for project 1. It should have been done about 3 weeks ago, but kept getting pushed back.



Gotta get back into the habit of posting regularly...

Scaling Up

So just what are we talking about here when we talk about the US Steel site in Gary, IN? It's big, for sure, but how big is 'big'? To try to get an idea, here are some comparisons with some more familiar locales:


The site, in all it's barren, washed-out, strip-mined-lookin' glory.


Comparing the 8-mile long site to the Chicago Loop. Note: the defining boundaries of the Loop are somewhat flexible. In this instance the 4 sides are Wacker (N. and W.), Michigan Ave (E.), and Congress (S.), so as to encompass the full heart of the downtown area. The actual loop of the L -- from which the name comes -- is bounded by Wells (W.), Lake (N.), Wabash (E.), and Van Buren (S.), which forms a rectangle about 30% smaller than the one indicated above...



Gary/Chicago Airport compared to Tokyo, Detroit, and LAX. Check out how small LAX is compared to the others!


Here's how our site compares to everyone's favorite, FOA's Yokohama Terminal.


The site is bordered by the Indiana Dunes State Park to the east. Speaking of parks, here's how the size of London's Hyde Park and NYC's Cental Park compare.


And, finally, here's how the length of the site compares to the distance between Ann Arbor and Chelsea.

Power Copies vs. Document Templates

I've been wondering if there is an advantage to using document templates over power copies if the model doesn't have any solids. I think I may have my answer.

Currently my model has 150 floors that are created using fills and extrusions, so everything is a surface -- no solids means I can use a power copy to make each floor. Trouble is, after 150 copies of the floor (well, technically, 149), the model runs REALLY SLOW. Each parameter adjustment takes about 30-45 seconds to run. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but I'm used to less than 5 seconds for processing changes...

Now I wonder: if I had set the floor up as one part, and the framework as another, and merged them using a document template, would it run faster? I also wonder if using 1 solid shape for each floor instead of 2 fills and a profile extrusion would help speed things along...

...next time, next time

Awwwwww Freak Out!

Methinks DP (or possibly my laptop) doesn't like to change too rapidly. Case in point:

I have a parameter that adjusts the depth (thickness) of each horizontal plate. This is a very forgiving parameter, and can be adjusted from almost nothing to a whooole lot (it has worked at 1' and at 75', and many points in between).

As can be seen here, it works nicely stepping from 60' down to 15':


The freak out happens when it tries to jump from 60' directly to 15':

Note that the floor_to_floor parameter in this is the same as it was in the previous screenshot... if it's not too small to read, that is...

Why would it freak out when jumping from 60' to 15' when it's perfectly fine jumping from 60' to 30' to 15'??

Two Mistakes

#1: An odd quirk

My floorplate geometry is set up such that the centers of each arc lie on the same circle, and each arc is tangent to the same circle (so all the arcs are the same size). Also, the centers of the arcs are equadistant from each other, so the straight lines connecting the endpoints are all the same length. That's all well and good, but it's not the point.

I have a parameter to set the length of the straight line segments, and the radii/positioning of the arcs adjusts to the line segment constraints. Since there is no upper limit to where I can set the line segment parameter, I can push the line segments until they cross eachother, which creates a bit of a crisis for the arcs that are supposed to be in between the segments. I pushed the parameter beyond this limit and Mickey Mouse popped out.

The trick is, once Mickey appears, he won't go away, even if I decrease the line segment length parameter back to within appropriate bounds. It's like DP has created new geometry to adjust for the segments when they are too long, and then that new geometry stays put even after the line segments go back to their original length. I wonder if there's a way to get around this....


an animation of pushing the parameter limits


#2: Sticking parameters in power copies

I'm still getting used to what it means to include parameters and relations in power copies, both on the input and copy creation side of the bar. My floorplate geometry is supposed to respond to 3 parameters: the length of the straight line connecting the arcs, a factor that adjusts the amount of rotation, and the distance between floors. In this example I had spent so long worrying about the adjustments I made in plan, that I completely forgot that I had set parameters for adjustment in elevation. Note the missing 'floor_to_floor' parameter:



The worst part is that I forgot to test the floor_to_floor parameter until after I had painstakingly added 18 power copies that lacked that height adjustment ability. The planes that made up the supports for each copy could be readily adjusted, but the extrusion height of each copy was supposed to follow suit. Ahh, I can't wait until we learn how to script...


On the plus side, the straight line segment adjustment and the rotation adjustment worked just fine.

C'mon Baby, Let's do the Twist

Finally got power copies to work correctly!! Well, mostly correctly. In the next iteration I will remember to turn off all extraneous planes and lines before making the initial copy, so then won't have to go back into each instance to hide all that stuff I don't want to see (ex: screenshot #1).

Some things I like: The rotation of each floor is tied to the distance that floor is from the base. So the higher the floor is, the more it is rotated. Also, the overall size of each floor is tied to a profile curve.

Some things I will apply to the next iteration:

• Set extrusion height for floor slab depth to a parameter. Currently I can change the floor-to-floor height, but the slab depth is not controlled by anything.


• Set the "bite" diameter to be controlled by some other parameter. The diameter can be adjusted within the sketch that is within each powercopy instance, but I didn't build in any outside references that guide that diameter.


• Build the profile curve that controls the overall floor diameter as one piece. Currently it's three pieces (each ~1/3 the overall height). As such, when I instantiated a copy, and gave it the profile line as an input, it only locked onto one portion of that line. Then, if I tried to adjust the floor-to-floor height such that the top floor went above that first profile portion, I got an error. Bummer.