“We do not do that” or an ideal CAD system for an architect through the eyes of a designer

Along with the well-known holivaras, there is a battle poorly promoted on the Internet under the conditional name “Architects vs. Designers”. The essence of it in general terms is as follows: bad architects (I stress, bad ones) see façade design as their most important activity, not particularly bothered by the constructive ability to realize the results of a flight of their imagination, their ideas meet the requirements of regulatory documents for building planning, fire safety and other boring and uninteresting things. . Very bad architects, hearing from the implementers of their ideas, that is, from designers, for example, about the impossibility of overlapping a twelve-meter span by a plate of 100 mm thick, throw a white scarf over their shoulders, correct them, and languidly looking into the distance give a maxim like "I am the creator attendants, and this is your job. "

Of course, showing one extreme of the situation, it would be dishonest not to point out one more - bad (I emphasize - bad) designers are lazy (and scary) to count and design something other than rectangular in plan and section of a one-story garage without windows, so everything that goes beyond The designated framework is subject to authoritative discussion within the commune, ridicule, harsh rejection, and the arrogant "We are here, and we sit" in the address of the architects.

Good architects and good designers tend to find a common language.
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Button for architect

The most popular CAD system for architects in Russia is Archiscad from Graphisoft (I don’t have statistics, based on personal experience). For this reason, I accepted it as a collective image of architectural CAD systems in general, and using its example I will try to describe what changes in it would smooth out the sharp corners of the conflict described above.

Let's start with the fact that a significant part of the architectural miscalculations are still caused not by the rebellion of the inner rebellious genius, but by the elementary forgetfulness and ignorance of the norms. There may be several points of view. I adhere to the least radical position - of all norms, especially given their constant variability, ornate formulations and the incredible hard work of the organizations making up these norms, it is impossible to know (especially remember). In the end, many engineers involved in the calculation of building structures have no idea about equivalent sections, deformation modules, etc., and, nevertheless, give adequate solutions by pressing a button using the calculation complexes. For architects there is no such concessions.

Where to run?

Contrary to popular opinion, the most difficult and important task of the architect is not to achieve the spectacular appearance of his brainchild, but to develop adequate layouts, on the basis of which the project should be developed (in practice, it often happens the other way around - the layouts are crammed into previously developed facades). Unless, of course, we are talking about designing a real civil engineering object, and not about working for an architectural competition. In the Archikad, there are no tools that facilitate the planning of a building. Moreover, in the project developed in this system, it is impossible to find even references to the functional purpose of the building, except directly in its name, although this parameter should go through the entire work of the architect. I would suggest doing it like this:

- The architect pressed Ctrl-N. Immediately after that, he indicates the functional purpose of the building (office, shopping center, housing, etc.).

- Further, the architect indicates some limiting and guiding him
creativity options. It can be - the maximum / minimum / required design area of ​​the building, building volume, building area, area
the site allotted for construction; the area of ​​the site allotted for improvement, the degree of fire resistance of the building, etc.

- Based on these data, inside the CAD system, in accordance with the current standards (regularly updated, of course), the key parameters of the layout should be calculated - the number of evacuation exits from the floor, the number of people in the room (employees in offices / visitors in shops / residents in apartments), sizes of fire compartments, etc.

- Along with the abstract Door and Ladder tools, the Evacuation Exit tool should be present. The door of the door is different, and the emergency exits are subject to strict restrictions (width, number, degree of fire resistance, gradient of stairs and much more). These very emergency exits, which do not meet the standards from the initial stages of project development, very often lead to significant reworkings and changes at its final stages.

- At the end of the planning of the facility, within the program it should be audited. With an indication of weaknesses. This is a completely simple and easy-to-implement algorithm. It’s amazing to me why this has not been done before.

Creator and money

It is absolutely incomprehensible why CAD, the developers of which point to the principle of “virtual building” as the main one in the work of their program, has not yet implemented the automatic calculation of the technical and economic indicators of the object. These are elementary, but very labor-intensive for manual calculation of calculations, and at the same time - one of the main objectives of preliminary design. As practice shows (and common sense suggests), customers are primarily interested in the floor area of ​​the future building (the number of meters of housing sold, the number of leased retail space), its construction volume (which is the main parameter when calculating construction costs), and the ratio of these indicators , and very slightly - appearance. Evil and greedy people, devoid of a sense of beauty, yes.

Little engineer

CAD, in which the user can set the values ​​of transparency, reflectivity and brightness of glare for a construction material, but cannot - the specific gravity and thermal conductivity coefficient, has no right to be considered an architectural package. Design, good design package - certainly, but not architectural. The resistance to heat transfer of enclosing structures is also the work of the architect. At least at the initial level. If everyone understood this, there would be no situations like processing the draft design and the project of foundations (as well as their renegotiation with all-all) due to the fact that at the initial stage the walls of the office building were made of 380 mm thick silicate brick.
In order to assess the compliance of structures with the requirements of heat engineering standards, no breakdown of the building into final elements is required, the transfer of its structure to external heat engineering packages (and the architect will not do it). There is an editor for multilayer structures. What prevented to add there the column "Heat transfer coefficient"? And a simple, simple calculation here. Unclear.

Well, the same can be said about the proportion. The approximate height of the beam can also be estimated in real time, based on the payload, the weight of the slab and the span. The architect creates, sees that he has a half meter beam and thinks about it. And does not swear with the designer after the approval of the project. Very good and correct.

Total

All of the above is rather messy and most of all looks like a fiery speech about a 3D-action. Nevertheless, I seemed to say what I wanted to say. CAD developers for architects do an enormous amount of work and produce an excellent product, but it seems to me that they somewhat misrepresent the responsibilities of their target audience. At the very least, their presentation is at odds with mine. I will not take the liberty to consider my only correct one.

* - the picture at the beginning of the note - visualization of the project of the student campus of the Alina Mink architectural contest “Image of Russia 2012”.