BOMBYX – The Chair of Sustainable Construction, ETH Zurich
The goal of Bombyx is to allow for simplified whole building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of buildings during design.
The current WIP version focusses on the assessment of embodied impacts using the LCA database for building materials.
Bombyx2.0.7 comes with new features and bug fixes:
- internet access no longer required (includes database)
- component outputs marked as “(text)” provide additional info for the users
- generating dropdown menu selections for easier usage
- new top-down functionality – Building level design
- bug and typo fixes
- new icons
- window component reworked
- example file available for download (separate zip file)
Future development will focus on visualization, creating custom materials, adding external databases, Mac support, bug fixes and more.
Rhino vault – The Block Research Group, ETH Zurich
Rhino VAULT 2 (RV2) is an open-source research and development platform for funicular form-finding built with COMPAS, a Python-based framework for computational research and collaboration in Architecture, Engineering, and Digital Fabrication.
RV2 is based on the theory of Thrust Network Analysis (TNA) approach to intuitively create and explore compression-only structures. Using reciprocal diagrams, RV2 provides an intuitive, fast funicular form-finding method, adopting the same advantages of techniques such as Graphic Statics, but offering a viable extension to three-dimensional problems. Our goal is to share a transparent setup to let you not only create beautiful shapes but also to give you an understanding of the underlying structural principles.
RV2 is a Rhino plugin that replaces RhinoVAULT for Rhino versions 6 and above. Unlike RhinoVAULT, RV2 no longer relies on Rhino for its computational implementation. Instead, it is built entirely with open source packages from the COMPAS ecosystem and will, therefore, be available not only for Rhino and Grasshopper, but also for Blender and other tools with a Python scripting interface, and ultimately even in the browser.