Galapagos

I am an intermediate grasshopper user, and have been using it for about a year and a half now. One of the only tools i've not been able to get my head around is the galapagos - evolutionary solver.

So here's the train of thought:

I am an architect working in a firm that mostly does hotels. We have a 5 star division and a budget division. The director of the firm likes to play tetris with rectalinear rooms and squeeze as many into a floor plate as possible. He prides himself on being able to achieve optimum efficiency (something i doubt).

The question:

Would it be possible to use galapagos to do this exercise - in effect automating the process?

I ideally would like to set:
Floor plate area

a percentage for horizontal circulation (giving a maximum and minimum width/length)

a percentage for vertical circulation (with max amd min dims)

the area of a room (again setting a maximum and minimum width/length)

Ultimately in the hope that 4 or 5 of the most efficient possibilities could be calculated in seconds and presented to my director?

I know this request sounds remarkably unglamorous, but it drives me insane when i see him sitting there for hours "designing". I am trying to automate a lot of the processes that go on in the office and bring it into the 21st century.

I am not sure how to begin this task or if it is even possible. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 18, 2011 at 11:41am

Hi K,

sounds pretty tricky. First of all you need to figure out all the variables in this problem. It sounds like there's quite a few and I suspect a lot of them are related in complex ways. I suspect you'll also need access paths to rooms and ways to deal with elevator shafts and stairways etc.

I can tell you with a high certainly that it will take longer than a few seconds. A very simple problem with few variables takes about 30-seconds to a minute. A large problem might take days.

I think the problem is well suited for an evolutionary solver, but poorly suited for Grasshopper. You'd have to somehow boil the entire design down to a bunch of sliders, which might not even be possible.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by KK on March 21, 2011 at 4:02am

Hi David,

Thanks very much for your reply - very helpful.

I was wondering if you don't think the problem suitable to grasshopper could you recommend any evolutionary solvers that might be able to deal with the probelm?

I guess from here it is a matter of me beginning to map all the variables and their relationships.

I am determined to automate the process my director goes through to save my frustration.

Any further help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks K

Permalink Reply by Joe S. on March 21, 2011 at 4:20am

If you have a rough knowledge of programming you may want to start with processing (processing.org) I believe it may have some evolutionary solver libraries available and will be faster for the kind of problem you are dealing with. You can even import back into grasshopper when you are done. You will still have to break down your problem into logical parts though, and it doesn't have the rhino graphics kernel, etc. Otherwise maybe vb.net?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 21, 2011 at 4:56am

Sure, Galapagos is a stand-alone dll. You can use it without using Grasshopper. So if you know your way around C# or VB, you can probably write a specific solver. Added benefit, you get all the Rhino geometry code thrown in for free.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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