Arup has designed a Net Zero Carbon in operation (NZCio) Welsh school campus using performance modelling technology from global climate tech firm, IES.

IES’s Virtual Environment (VE) dynamic modelling software played a central role in the design of the Mynydd Isa Campus, which provides nursery, primary, and secondary education for more than 1,300 pupils, helping to reduce carbon emissions by over 100 tonnes per year.

Designed in 2023 and completed in 2025, the two-storey, 10,500m² campus meets Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) ‘Excellent’ standards, reflecting strong performance across areas such as energy use, materials, water and occupant wellbeing.

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The IESVE software was used to assess and refine energy performance, taking into account overheating risks under various climate scenarios, including typical years, warm summers and prolonged heatwaves.

The solutions included installing more than 1,000 solar panels, which are expected to generate over 500,000 kWh of electricity each year. This enables the building to produce as much energy as it consumes. To manage comfort, a complex cross-ventilation chimney concept and a ‘traffic light system’ in classrooms is used to alert teachers to open/close windows. The project also made a 25-year performance commitment to ensure the building remains efficient and resilient to future climate conditions.

“This project exemplifies how performance modelling technology can deliver on multiple fronts – achieving Net Zero Carbon in operation, supporting BREEAM ‘Excellent’ certification, and closing the gap between design and real-world performance,” said Niall Gibson, Building Performance Specialist at IES.

“Rising heat is putting huge pressure on infrastructure that was never designed for these conditions. This isn’t about futureproofing; it’s about catching up with a crisis that’s already here. If we’re serious about tackling climate change, making existing infrastructure more resilient, efficient, and climate-ready must be a national priority. We’re proud to support Arup in delivering a school that sets the standard for future-proof public buildings.”

“I feel honoured to have worked on this project from the very beginning and take it through to completion,” said Steven Burrows, associate building physics engineer at Arup. “IESVE modelling played a significant role in the design of the scheme – from developing the complex cross ventilation chimney concept to achieving Net Zero Carbon in operation. It’s an incredible achievement that the building generates as much energy as it will consume over the course of a year.”

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Scia has released Scia Engineer 2026, a major update to its multi-material structural analysis and design software.

Headline enhancements include better tools for designing structures subject to mobile loads, full compliance with the upcoming 2^nd generation of Eurocodes, and automated wind load generation in compliance with the latest US design code ASCE 7-22.

Other new features include “accurate and economical” design of structures subjected to significant torsion and new tools to help eliminate vibrations due to human activity.

For moving load systems, such as traffic on bridges, cranes in industrial facilities, or crowds walking across slabs, Scia promises significant time savings for simulation by making it “easy and straightforward” to handle the large number of load combinations. The software automatically identifies the worst-case load positions before running calculations, eliminating the need to process negligible or non-critical load cases.

For buildings with large open areas, footbridges or lightweight floors, the new foot-fall (vibration) analysis capability allows engineers to model human-activity induced dynamic responses, helping to eliminate vibration issues and avoid costly modifications after construction.

For elements subjected to high torsion or thin-walled/open-section beams, the “Beam FE accounting for warping (7th degree of freedom)” feature is said to ensure deeper, more accurate analysis, avoiding the limitations of standard beam finite elements.

Additionally, modelling of external (unbonded) tendons for beams, slabs, walls and plates has been enhanced: users can define tendon paths manually or import them and perform staged analysis to simulate installation, tensioning and grouting processes.

Finally, on the interoperability front, SCIA Engineer 2026 integrates with the broader Bimplus model-based data and information management collaboration platform to help support model-based data sharing across disciplines and project phases from design through build and operation.

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The building envelope has always been one of architecture’s most demanding battlegrounds. A façade is expected to satisfy multiple, often conflicting requirements. It must express design intent, meet performance targets for energy efficiency, comfort and daylight, and comply with regulations.

Traditionally, assessments to ensure these requirements are met have been left until late on in projects, once a design is largely fixed and alterations become expensive.

Dublin-based FenestraPro was created to address this issue, giving architects direct access to façade performance tools inside of their existing BIM workflows and when their decisions can most optimally influence outcomes.

Established in 2012 by technologists Simon Whelan and Dave Palmer, FenestraPro emerged from a frustration with digital analysis tools that were either too specialist for day-to-day design work or too disconnected from the platforms that architects actually use.

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The goal was to bring performance data into the design process itself, enabling architects to weigh the consequences of their choices while still sketching and modelling.

Today, FenestraPro is used by international firms such as AECOM, Jacobs and HKS, where architects and engineers rely on it to help close the gap between aesthetic intent and energy performance.

Face value

FenestraPro’s technology centres on façade analysis and offers deep integration with Autodesk environments. Its best-known product, FenestraPro for Revit, runs as an add-on and allows users to test glazing proportions, shading devices and material selections without leaving their BIM model.

A partner application extends similar functionality into Autodesk’s emerging Forma conceptual design platform, enabling performance analysis from the massing stage onwards. In this way, designers can quickly evaluate how orientation, window-to-wall ratios or shading strategies will affect daylight levels and energy use.

Instead of waiting on external reports, the system provides immediate feedback, with colour-coded surfaces and dynamic charts that highlight potential problem areas such as glare or excessive solar gain.

The software deliberately avoids imposing the heavy computational demands associated with full building simulation tools. Instead, it delivers a lightweight, responsive engine designed for iteration.

This makes it possible for users to compare multiple façade options in quick succession, guiding design choices before geometry becomes too fixed. The package also incorporates a database of more than a thousand glazing products, complete with accurate thermal and solar properties. Recent integrations, such as a link with Vitro Architectural Glass, allow data from manufacturers’ specification platforms to flow directly into the FenestraPro environment, grounding analysis in real-world products rather than generic assumptions.

As projects evolve, the software continues to add value. It supports detailed façade modelling inside Revit, from panelisation through to mullion layouts, while maintaining live performance feedback.

One notable feature is its ability to identify errors or weaknesses in BIM energy models – issues that can compromise downstream analysis. By flagging these early, the tool ensures that data exported from Revit is both reliable and compliant. Reports and outputs can then be generated for a range of uses, from compliance submissions to client presentations.

Design teams can evaluate options in minutes, not days, which accelerates iteration and avoids costly late-stage changes. Building owners get the assurance that the building envelope has been optimised for operational energy consumption and improved occupant comfort. Meanwhile, architects can have greater confidence that their aesthetic choices will work in harmony with performance/ sustainability requirements.

Connecting the dots

FenestraPro does not aim to replace engineering-grade simulation packages. Instead, it focuses on providing architects with the early intelligence they need to make smart façade decisions. By connecting the dots between early-stage exploration in Forma and detailed design in Revit, the platform promotes a joined-up approach to performance.

With sustainability targets becoming stricter and clients demanding more accountability, tools that embed envelope analytics into mainstream BIM workflows are gaining in importance.

FenestraPro’s strategy is to complement existing design environments, rather than reinvent them, positioning itself as a pragmatic but powerful partner in the pursuit of sustainable architecture.

Prices start at $29 per month for Envelope Analysis in Forma and $149 per month for a Premium offering, which adds Revit integration, detailed thermal analysis, carbon benchmarking, model checking and export tools. Discounts are available for teams.

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Arup has adopted the Pollination Revit-to-IESVE plug-in from IES, to streamline the creation of energy models for building performance simulation.

The plug in allows users of IES Virtual Environment (IESVE) software to import Revit or Rhino models directly. IES states that this has enabled Arup to reduce modelling time by up to 40%.

The plug-in brings the full BIM model into IESVE, including elements such as slanted roofs, complex shading, and ceiling or floor plenums. According to IES, this allows engineers to begin whole-building performance simulations immediately.

IES also explains that partial model export — allowing export of single floors or even individual rooms — has been particularly valuable for integrating updates from the latest BIM models throughout the design process.

Arup has already applied the technology to projects across the UK, mainland Europe and the Middle East, covering building types from high-rise offices to data centres.

“Pollination Revit to IESVE plug-in enables modelling teams to speed up and to encourage high performance building design from early stage through detailed design,” said Levent Kocalioglu, senior consultant at Arup.

“This workflow offers our team more valuable time to analyse alternatives that we invest in fine tuning the performance of our design considerations. From our recent projects, the workflow helps to reduce the modelling time significantly.”

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IES has signed a strategic partnership with French software company Octopus Lab to bring better indoor air quality simulation to a wider international audience. Octopus Lab’s Indalo software uses Inca-Indoor, which is claimed to be the world’s only validated indoor air chemistry calculation engine.

IES’ Virtual Environment (VE) software, which is used for building performance analysis, currently simulates the ventilation and impact in terms of internal CO2 concentration, allowing VE users to set external concentration levels, test ventilation strategies and simulate occupants CO2 release to calculate indoor CO2 levels. However, CO2 is not the only chemical that impacts human health and comfort, and occupants are not the only source of chemicals.

The integration of Indalo into IESVE will allow VE users to simulate the concentration of over a thousand pollutants, taking into account various parameters such as emissions from materials and furniture, ventilation strategy, outdoor pollution, occupancy and planned activities.

Indoor Air Quality has become a major global health concern. New or recently renovated buildings are becoming increasingly airtight in response to today’s need for energy efficiency. While better insulation helps to reduce heat loss, it is often forgotten that it also prevents the proper renewal of indoor air.

Poor air quality can be the cause of many health problems, ranging from simple temporary tiredness to serious respiratory diseases.

Indalo is designed to enable building designers to make the best possible ventilation and material choices in order to meet indoor air quality objectives (regulatory or certification) in future new or renovated buildings. The solution also makes it possible to predict the risks of mould and viral infections and identify the most appropriate ways to limit them.

The Indalo plugin exports all relevant information from the VE model to Indalo, with all necessary data provided in the VE via IES’s Navigator technology. Geometry, ventilation flow rates, and occupancy is already simulated by the VE and the results can then be exported. Additional information such as materials’ emissions, filtration and external pollutants’ concentration, can be input via the VE Navigator to complete the required data for the Indalo calculation.

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While BIM adoption has primarily been driven by the need for coordinated documentation output, the AEC industry has always hoped to derive other model-centric benefits from this approach. In particular, the analysis, simulation and optimisation of designs has been seen as a significant potential source of competitive advantage.

With this in mind, more advanced 3D practitioners with considerable in-house programming resources have created their own suites of analysis applications. These firms include Foster + Partners, for example, as well as ARD, which presented on this subject at AEC Magazine’s NXT BLD conference last year. Those companies that have taken this route insist that the insights they derive from such tools are especially useful in the early stages of a design.

For other firms, many new conceptual tools now come with built-in analysis capabilities that focus on environmental conditions such as daylight, solar energy and wind. These tools, which include Autodesk Forma, provide quick feedback. The insights they provide may not be definitive, or offer specialist indemnity, but they are giving more firms access to early-stage, performance-based design.

Acoustic analysis, however, is an area where available tools are either highly specialist, developed in-house by very large firms, or both.

Treble aims to change that tune. Last year, the Reykjavik-based company came to market with a more accessible acoustic simulation suite that can generate, from BIM data, interactive, real-time, immersive audio-visual ‘auralisations’.

The Treble platform is cloud-based and uses a proprietary wave-based simulation technology, which offers new levels of accuracy, according to company executives. Geometry can be imported from SketchUp Pro, Rhino and Revit, via plug-ins. The application identifies problems like reverberation, assesses speech intelligibility, privacy, privacy distance and distraction distance.

Recently, AEC Magazine got the opportunity to chat with Treble co-founder Dr Finnur Pind, and hear more about how this self-confessed ‘sound nerd’ turned his attention to the AEC industry.

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Sound city

Reykjavik is an exceptionally musical city. It boasts lots of local bands and plenty of places to hear live music, not least at its annual Airwaves musical festival. Every November, live performances take over seemingly every square inch of the city, even its shop windows.

Dr Pind started his acoustic journey within the city’s lively music scene and studied engineering because he wanted to know how guitar amplifiers and other audio equipment work. This drew him further into the field of acoustics engineering, culminating in a doctorate in sound simulation technology. As part of his PhD research, he developed new algorithms capable of simulating sound faster and more precisely than previous approaches. And that, in turn, led to the founding of Treble.

“Our research was always kind of very Icelandic developer Treble has created a suite of tools designed to analyse and optimise designs for acoustic performance, based on the founder’s own research into wave-based sound simulation analysis Treble: sound advice Software practically oriented. We wanted to solve real-world problems, especially for the building industry, where people are always struggling with dealing with acoustics,” says Pind.

“As my PhD was concluding, me and my friend Jasper [Pedersen], who’s also an acoustic simulation guy, thought we could do something with this. We decided to apply for a grant, which we got, so we thought we had better start a company!”

Treble is currently fundraising for a Series A investment round, having already gone through a pre-seed and seed round and raised $10 million so far ($3 million in grants and $7 million in equity). Investors include the European Innovation Council and NOVA, the venture arm of building materials giant Saint-Gobain.

As Dr Pind explains, the Treble application takes a 3D model of an environment, into which the user can place sound sources, such as a human talking, or a loudspeaker. The tool takes into consideration the materials used in the model and then simulates how the source will sound in real life. It might be used for designing and optimising that space, or designing and optimising a sound system, from the small (a speaker phone, say) to the vast (a concert hall system). In fact, he adds, many audio tech companies use Treble to train or improve adaptive audio technologies that adjust to the spaces in which they are placed.

There are two core markets for Treble, as Pind sees it: users that want to build acoustic analysis for a particular sound system for a building, and tech customers who require simulation technology to synthesise a million different environments, in order to create data to improve their audio algorithms. “While these two applications seem quite disconnected, from our technology perspective, it’s all very related,” he says.

Treble deliver results as listening experiences, giving designers and clients the ability to hear the sounds associated with a proposed design. Hearing is believing, after all

At the start of its development, Treble concentrated on serving the sound specialist community, but as the company grows, it is developing tools for architects working on spaces that might include a typical meeting room, an office layout, a call centre, or a classroom.

A key aim for the application development was to make Treble simple to use and able to work seamlessly with other design tools. Going from BIM to Treble, performing an analysis and then getting the feedback can be done in almost one click. Treble extracts the 3D model and its materials, and then simulates how this will sound. Results are delivered as either coefficients, graphs or colour maps. Users can venture into the real-life space and listen to the predicted sound on headphones. They can flip between different design variations and materials and hear how this impacts sound quality.

“We are most proud of this simulation engine that we built, which is very precise. We’ve benchmarked it against many, many real-world scenarios and it’s so precise that it’s not just useful for building design, but also for product development and data generation, where you really need real-world fidelity. Our technology doesn’t use the typical ray casting approach. Instead, we solve the maths equations that describe sound propagation, capturing the wave nature of sound.”

Technology choices

So why did Pind choose to support SketchUp, Rhino and Revit? He explained, “SketchUp is used a lot by acoustic engineers, acoustic specialists. That seems to be a common tool for them to prepare models for simulation. And then Rhino too, is so powerful, and used in early designs, which is a good place to think about acoustic performance. For generative design, we have an SDK/API, perfect for Rhino/Grasshopper to work with for analytical loops. We have done some internal tests with that kind of process, but the API is still relatively new. Some of our customers are testing this out. Revit for BIM modelling, of course, because it’s just so widely used.”

From the onset, he decided Treble should be browser-based and deliver its experience within the browser. This way, it’s possible to create virtual listening experiences, and then send them over the web. The person on the receiving end just opens it in their browser and can listen to the simulated acoustics from a set position within the model. This capability is powered by gaming engine technology.

Because these experiences can be shared via the web and delivered to headphones, you can have as many people as you want listening. Alternatively, the experience could be delivered to a speaker. While for now, these are screen-based experiences, virtual reality options are on the roadmap, leveraging Unity and Unreal.

The company has already been working with companies that are fiercely protective when it comes to data security, such as automotive manufacturers, and Treble complies with the highest cloud security certifications. It’s considered safe enough to persuade some of the biggest tech firms to upload some of their most sensitive designs – but if a big client wanted to deploy locally on its own server farm, for example, Pind says that could be considered.

Until now, Treble has supported the analysis of just one space at a time, with users having to pick representative spaces out of the building they wish to analyse. But that’s about to change with the imminent launch of what Pind calls ‘multi-space import’, where they can input a whole building and get a quick analysis of basically every space inside it. If problematic areas are found, users might zoom in and iterate the design to solve the acoustic issue.

The software doesn’t yet offer advice on rectifying a design, but it clearly indicates where problems lie. It’s then the job of the designer to adjust the materials, the space, or the furnishings to then explore the impact on sound of these changes.

The core analysis isn’t AI-driven, either – but the company is looking to utilise some kind of machine learning to improve processes and efficiency. Outside of the AEC world, Treble is already active in the world of ‘synthetic data generation’, where simulation is used to generate data, which is then used to train machine learning models. For Treble, this means providing analysed spaces for all kinds of modern audio equipment manufacturers. The resulting data sets feed machine learning algorithms that look to detect speech, remove extraneous noise, or improve acoustics in that space. For manufacturers, getting their hands on these training datasets can be a headache. Treble, by contrast, can easily generate 10,000 meeting rooms, containing all sorts of surface materials, furnishing and occupants. According to Pind, this is becoming one of Treble’s biggest use cases.

Hearing is believing

Treble is typical of the way that many new software companies now come to market. Their solutions are written as services in the cloud, with plug-in and API access to relevant third-party tools.

But where it differs from other analysis tools that focus on early-stage design is that while many of these use nice colour maps to deliver indicative results, these may still mean little to a non-specialist. Treble’s answer is to deliver results as listening experiences, giving designers and clients the ability to hear the sounds associated with a proposed design. Hearing is believing, after all, and Treble looks like a useful tool to have in the BIM analysis armoury.

It’s available for a 30-day free trial that offers access to all features. From there, one seat for small and occasional users is priced at €149/month, with a token system deployed to pay for processing. A one-seat unlimited use bundle is €299/ month. For five or more seats, you’ll need an Enterprise bundle, which requires a call with the company to discuss needs. Discounts are available for yearly payment and special pricing is available for academics. Access to the Treble SDK is currently subject to a waiting list.

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TwinUp is a new AI-driven architectural software tool for creating, managing, optimising, and presenting 3D design models and project images.

The platform is powered by ‘Arch-e’, an AI-driven personal assistant that processes ‘vast amounts’ of data in real-time to transform the design process from beginning to end.’

The software suite is currently in beta and includes three integrated apps: TwinUp Community, TwinUp Building, and TwinUp World.

TwinUp Community is a free virtual design portfolio and social media platform just for architects. Users upload, enhance, organize, and share images and videos of their design work with private groups and the larger architectural community at their choosing.

TwinUp Building is a 3D digital twin maker app that helps architects convert their 3D models (BIM, et. al.) into what TwinUp describes as digital twin models. TwinUp Building’s visualisation features and simulation capabilities allow users to render, analyse, optimize, present, and share their models with peers and clients.

TwinUp World is a 3D virtual digital twin model of the earth whereupon users can place their 3D project models for analysis, enhancement, rendering, and presentation in their proper local site context. Features include advanced navigation tools, data layers, rendering tools, multi-party collaboration interfaces, and simulation features. An App Store of plug-in modules adds a selection of ML-based design simulation capabilities, from simple daylight studies to more complex carbon emissions simulations for single and multiple buildings.

TwinUp Community is slated to launch early this summer (2023), and TwinUp World is expected to launch later this Autumn (2023). The TwinUp Beta Program is currently accepting applications from practicing architects.

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Geological modelling specialist, Seequent, has released Slope3D, a slope stability analysis tool for geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists.

According to Seequent, Slop3D offers a practical approach for capturing slope failure mechanisms for simple to complex geotechnical models.

Building on the capabilities of Seequent’s GeoStudio 2D Slope/W product, Slope3D is billed as an intuitive limit equilibrium solution for analysing rock and soil slopes in mining and civil projects – for example, hillslopes, open pit mines, and engineered structures such as dams and levees.

“Ensuring the safety and reliability of engineered projects is at the heart of geotechnical engineering,” said Chris Kelln, director, technical solutions for GeoStudio.

“We specifically designed Slope3D to empower geotechnical and geological engineers to make confident decisions, improve safety, reduce project risks and costs, and ultimately design better infrastructure.”

Slope3D is part of Seequent’s GeoStudio 2023 release. It connects directly with Seequent’s geological modelling software, Leapfrog, via Seequent Central, and integrates with GeoStudio’s Seep3D. According to Seequent, this creates a seamless workflow with smooth data exchange and simpler data management to improve project accuracy and outcomes.

Seequent was acquired by Bentley Systems in 2021 for $1.05 billion.

Seequent’s products include Geosoft for 3D earth modelling and geoscience data management, GeoStudio for geotechnical slope stability and de-formation modelling, and Leapfrog for 3D geological modelling and visualisation.

Leapfrog appears to have particular relevance to infrastructure projects. The software is designed to replace traditional 2D subsurface modelling and simulation processes. According to Bentley, the usage of the software, often in conjunction with Bentley’s software offerings, has been growing consistently in civil infrastructure sectors.

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We all know BIM models have a tendency to get big, fast. The more detail that gets added, the slower manipulating the model becomes. There’s an argument that, for certain analyses and deeper insight into the performance of a building design, using something simultaneously more lightweight and more intelligent might be a better way to proceed.

Enter Topologic, a free, open-source tool that breaks down buildings into an external envelope and subdivisions of the enclosed space. Creating separate spaces and zones by using zero-thickness internal surfaces produces a model that is optimised for better understanding of building performance.

Topologic’s story starts with Dr Robert Aish, the ‘father’ of Bentley Systems Generative Components (GC) and Autodesk DesignScript. He was writing a paper on the application of non-manifold topology as a lightweight form for architectural modelling as far back as 2013.

Meanwhile, Dr Wassim Jabi of Cardiff University, who was researching parametric design thinking and its role in building performance simulation, took Aish’s research on board. Jabi applied the concept of non-manifold topology to his own design and energy performance simulation research, publishing papers on his findings in 2014 and 2015.

In 2015, Dr Jabi and Dr Aish (who at this time was visiting professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London) decided to collaborate. The goal of their research project was to investigate non-manifold topology further, by building a platform independent software library to be used with Grasshopper, Dynamo and Blender.

Their proposal was funded by a threeyear grant of over £300,000, awarded in 2016 by the Leverhulme Trust. In 2019, the first alpha version of Topologic was released. Once the project was complete, Aish left. Today, the code’s use in AEC practice is being championed and developed by Jabi.

Topologic is now an open-source software development kit and plug-in for visual data flow applications. Jabi claims it will assist architects in understanding their buildings from a holistic perspective — both as a physical assembly of components and as a logical, spatial and hierarchical system.

Topologic enables connections with analysis and simulation engines, such as EnergyPlus and OpenStudio and can be used to analyse the thermal performance of a building without the need for a huge and detailed BIM model. It can also be used to plot paths such as mapping fire egress routes, identifying the least disruptive route for a new service pipe, or computing the most congested location in a city layout.

Pretty much all BIM models are produced using walls, doors and windows – or in other words, building components. The reality is that, in analysis, models do not need this level of detail. What they do need is more knowledge of connections and interfaces. And while you will find plenty of adjacencies of spaces in a typical BIM model, the way they are modelled tends to create lapping co-linear lines between spaces and edges that don’t meet. The result can create issues for confused analysis tools. Topologic tries to close those loops.

“Topologic is used to basically model spaces, rather than actual elements,” Jabi explains. “We are replacing detailed geometry with smart topology and information, thus reducing a very heavy geometric model into lightweight geometry. We add smart, rigorous topology to designs, such as how things are connected, and then imbue it with a lot of additional information.”

That information is not just attributes, he continues. It can also travel with geometric operations or topological information. This makes a Topologic model extremely lightweight and extremely powerful.

“Topologic is based on the idea of nonmanifold topology, which allows you to model spaces and create internal subdivisions, like cells. If you can imagine a cube and if every point on the surface of that cube were sentient, they would see the world divided into two sets – the outside and the inside of the cube,” he says.

“Now imagine that condition being violated, where a point on the cube can actually see more than two sets. The outside can see other sets of points inside the cube. That situation is called non-manifold. So basically, when you have a geometric engine that supports non-manifold topology, you can have extremely powerful representations.”

A building, for example, can be seen as an outside envelope with interior cells. These interior cells can encompass other interior cells. Hierarchical embedding is possible, too. “Then you can start to think of your building, your design, as a set of interconnected entities, usually defined as space,” says Jabi.

Topologic can be used to analyse the thermal performance of a building without the need for a huge and detailed BIM model. It can also be used to plot paths such as mapping fire egress routes, identifying the least disruptive route for a new service pipe, or computing the most congested location in a city layout

Explaining the fundamental database underpinning Topologic, Jabi says: “Behind all of this is the idea of a ‘graph’. This is unlike BIM systems, as we don’t have to use ad hoc methods to add topological connections. As an example, a door in Revit should know what two rooms it separates, but that only happens in Revit if you checkmark it at a certain point. If you don’t do that checkmark, that door doesn’t know what rooms it separates. In Topologic, that is built into the DNA of the software — everything knows what it is connected to, and it’s automatic and part of the data structure.”

Obviously one of the key times in a project to do analysis and to make important decisions is at the concept phase. Here, the industry has seen many exciting applications come to market. Most of these tools are based on the concept of spaces that lie adjacent to one another, which is Topologic’s core starting point, too.

Jabi explained that synergies between products have already kickstarted some collaborative development work. Topologic, for example, has worked with Testfit, because there are compatibilities between the models that the two products create.

“Testfit creates these simple, blocky models, where everything is interconnected. Once we understood how their file format was organised, we created a reader for it, and we imported Testfit models into Topologic,” says Jabi.

“This meant we could analyse the heck out of them, as we understood exactly the walls that are between two units, the walls between the unit and the corridor, the walls between the unit, and the elevator shaft etcetera,” he says.

The Topologic team has also created rules for generating graphic models, producing Revit models via Dynamo, ready for design development. “We could identify external walls, internal walls etcetera, so we were able to apply the right thickness and materials. So Topologic can be used as a driver to ‘thicken’ into a BIM model.”

While products like Testfit can generate hundreds of models very quickly, the software has no understanding of whether designs are energy efficient or if they constitute ‘good’ architecture. Even though Topologic can help to enable analysis and drive them into Revit, we wondered if the process might go in the opposite direction, from Revit into Topologic for analysis?

“We have started with a BIM model, rather than create one from Topologic,” says Jabi. “We took a model of a building that was filled with rooms, but they were not connected into apartments. So it was impossible to get an idea of the rentable area and have data for analysis.”

By running the model through Topologic, a graph was created where all the ‘graph islands’ (apartments) could be identified. The graph immediately went back to Revit, with apartments correctly assigned and colour coded, and schedules needed for analysis were created.

“So we can import an unstructured BIM model, run it through Topologic’s intelligence and make it a little bit more structured,” says Jabi. “But, you know, bad modelling is not something we can magically solve in Topologic. What we are advocating is to start modelling in Topologic first, and then move to BIM. Don’t model in BIM and move back to Topologic — if anything, that is the worst case scenario. While we have to deal with it, obviously, that’s not what we recommend. Start building even in SketchUp, or Blender, or wherever you have lightweight things, and then imbue them with intelligence, imbue them with information, and do lots of analysis on those lightweight models. Once you’re done, and you know what you’re doing, it’s just a click away to go to Revit models, so that it becomes an output not an input for us.”

With the rise of open source, Topologic plays well with popular tools such as Blender BIM. Bruno Postle, a colleague of Jabi and a member of the OSArch community, has used Blender, Topologic and Blender BIM to create BIM models, for example.

The process starts in standard Blender, where the user makes a simple cube structure and adds in slice planes of zero thickness to form spaces. Then, with one click, this is sent to Topologic, which behind the scenes starts to create a building with all the topology and information needed. Based on Topologic’s output, the data can be thickened with IFC information for building an energy and structural model. These full IFC files can be imported into Blender BIM. If the model needs changing, you can go back to the simple model, drag edges and so on, and convert it one more time.

Conclusion

In many ways, Topologic reminds me of the finite element analysis (FEA) packages used in the mechanical CAD world. While product designers are modelling every component and part in an engine assembly, the analysis teams are not using these explicit 3D models, because FEA tools need simplified geometry and lots of data about forces, materials and temperatures. The core output is performance information, to find design flaws and limits to the performance envelope.

Topologic is a spatial representation, a framework where questions can be asked before detailed modelling continues. And, as is the case with all these rapid conceptual tools, which predominantly report back financial information, Topologic can quickly identify any financial downsides of rapid design suggestions. The fact it’s free also makes it excellent value! Sometimes, it pays to think in levels of abstraction.

The source code can be downloaded here.

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Nvidia has expanded the reach of its 3D design, collaboration and simulation platform, Nvidia Omniverse, by introducing several new connectors that link standard applications through the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework.

 These include Blender, Cesium, Unity and Vectorworks. Omniverse Connectors for Azure Digital Twin, Blackshark.ai, and NavVis are coming soon, adding to the hundreds that are already available, such as Revit, SketchUp, Archicad, and 3ds Max.

Nvidia is also adding new features to the platform through the forthcoming Omniverse Kit 105 release. This includes the ‘first real time ray traced subsurface scattering shader’, as Richard Kerris, VP Omniverse platform development, Nvidia explains, “When light hits an object, depending on what that object is, a light can be refracted or split or shattered through the different types of surfaces.

“So when light hits marble or it hits something like skin, it doesn’t just bounce off of it, there’s actually parts where the light goes in, and it scatters around, but it’s very computationally hard to do.

“We were the first ones a few years ago to do real time photorealistic ray tracing and now adding to that the first real time ray trace subsurface scattering.”

Other forthcoming new features include performance improvements thanks to new runtime data transfer and scene optimisers for large ‘worlds’ and more ‘sim ready’ assets, now in the hundreds.

Nvidia has also been working closely with Microsoft to bring Omniverse Cloud to Microsoft Azure. The next stage is to bring this to Microsoft 365 to make Omniverse viewers available inside application such as Teams. From a Teams call, for example, participants will be able to teleport into a 3D environment to work and better understand what’s taking place. “Each of them will have their own experience in that 3D environment, collaboratively,” says Kerris.

“Integrating this [Omniverse] into Teams is just a natural progression of how we communicate. It’s the manipulation of the 3D world in much the same way you can do today in the 2D paradigm of the web,” he adds.

Users won’t need local processing for this. “You’ll be streaming out, in much the same way that you access the cloud through a browser,” says Kerris.

Omniverse will also be connected to the Azure IoT ecosystem, delivering real world sensor inputs from Azure Digital Twin to Omniverse models.

Everyone can be a developer

Nvidia is working to harness the power of ChatGPT for Omniverse. Kerris explains that end users will be able to use ChatGPT and instruct it to write code which they can then drop into Omniverse.

“You’ll have an idea for something, and you’ll just be able to tell it to create something and a platform like Omniverse will allow you to realise it and see your vision come to life,” he says.

Developers can also use AI-generated inputs to provide data to Omniverse extensions like Camera Studio, which generates and customises cameras in Omniverse using data created in ChatGPT. See video below

Nvidia has also announced Nvidia Picasso, a cloud service for AI powered image, video and 3D applications, designed for software developers, not for end users. “Imagine just typing in what you need, and it creates a USD-based model that you can put into Omniverse and continue on,” explained Kerris.

Finally, Nvidia has introduced its third generation of OVX, a computing system for large-scale digital twins running within Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise, powered by Nvidia L40 GPUs and Bluefield-3 DPUs.

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