This paper presents a computational design method to analyze and synthesize representation mechanisms in structural design. The role of shape grammar schemas in analyzing parametric and grammatical structural analysis is discussed, and a set of schema to generate novel structural topology is provided.

This paper introduces the special issue “Advances in Implemented Shape Grammars: Solutions and Applications” and frames the topic of computer implementations of shape grammars, both with a theoretical and an applied focus. This special issue focuses on the current state of the art regarding computer implementations of shape grammars and brings a discussion about how those systems can evolve in the coming years so that they can be used in real life design scenarios. This paper presents a brief state of the art of shape grammars implementation and an overview of the papers included in the current special issue categorized under technical design, interpreters and interface design, and uses cases. The paper ends with a comprehensive outlook into the future of shape grammars implementations.

The use of grammars in design and analysis has been set back by the lack of automated ways to induce them from arbitrarily structured datasets. Machine translation methods provide a construct for inducing grammars from coded data which have been extended to be used for design through pre-coded design data. This work introduces a four-step process for inducing grammars from un-coded structured datasets which can constitute a wide variety of data types, including many used in the design. The method includes: (1) extracting objects from the data, (2) forming structures from objects, (3) expanding structures into rules based on frequency, and (4) finding rule similarities that lead to consolidation or abstraction. To evaluate this method, grammars are induced from generated data, architectural layouts and three-dimensional design models to demonstrate that this method offers usable grammars automatically which are functionally similar to grammars produced by hand.

I present an implementation of shape grammars that is aimed at supporting designers. It has two parts: a grammar editor and a stand-alone interpreter. The editor is the modeling application Rhinoceros3d using Python scripts. The interpreter is general, is three-dimensional, and supports subshape detection. A grammar is a Rhinoceros3d model; thus users can manipulate all its parts directly and immediately. That is, they can modify any shape without selecting or invoking an editor, and they can lay out the parts of the grammar in any way they find meaningful. Using this approach, which I call a whole-grammar approach, users are shielded from most subdomain tasks, like typing text files or specifying transformations. Informal observations suggest that users of this implementation can work effectively.

This paper shows the way Leon Battista Alberti treatise De Re Aedificatoria column systematization shape grammar was built, and how the longitudinal elevation of the nave of the Sant'Andrea church was designed, evidencing some steps involved in the grammar construction process, its derivation, and the partial outputs gained from the grammar evaluation. The goal of this grammar is to infer Alberti's treatise rules through a computational approach evidencing its algorithmic nature, illustrating it, and understanding the De Re Aedificatoria rules that may be applied in the generation of some parts of buildings such as the Sant'Andrea church, showing a complementary method to archaeological, bibliographical, historical ones, among others, that have been used to understand the built environment. The rules provided by the grammar may be applied to an initial insertion point to produce a complete column and to a pre-existing plan or section element of a building generating its facade. It was proved, evaluating the grammar with a simple linear regression method, to what extent the treatise influenced the design of the facade in the study.

Shape grammars are rule-based formalisms for the specification of shape languages. Most of the existing shape grammars are developed on paper and have not been implemented computationally thus far. Nevertheless, the computer implementation of shape grammar is an important research question, not only to automate design analysis and generation, but also to extend the impact of shape grammars toward design practice and computer-aided design tools. In this paper, we investigate the implementation of shape grammars on a computer system, using a graph-theoretic representation. In particular, we describe and evaluate the implementation of the existing Rabo-de-Bacalhau transformation grammar. A practical step-by-step approach is presented, together with a discussion of important findings noticed during the implementation and evaluation. The proposed approach is shown to be both feasible and valuable in several aspects: we show how the attempt to implement a grammar on a computer system leads to a deeper understanding of that grammar, and might result in the further development of the grammar; we show how the proposed approach is embedded within a commercial computer-aided design environment to make the shape grammar formalism more accessible to students and practitioners, thereby increasing the impact of grammars on design practice; and the proposed step-by-step implementation approach has shown to be feasible for the implementation of the Rabo-de-Bacalhau transformation grammar, but can also be generalized using different ontologies for the implementation.

The concept of shape grammars has often been proposed to improve or support creative design processes. Shape grammar implementations have the potential to both automate parts of the design process and allow exploration of design alternatives. In many of the existing implementations, the main focus is either on capturing the rationale of a particular existing grammar or on allowing designers to develop a new grammar. However, little attention is typically given to the actual representation of the design space that can be explored in the interface of the implementation. With such representation, a shape grammar implementation could properly support designers who are still in the process of designing and may not yet have a clear shape grammar in mind. In this article, an approach and a proof-of-concept software system is proposed for a shape grammar implementation that provides a visual and interactive way to support design space exploration in a creative design process. We describe the method by which this software system can be used and focus on how designers can interact with the exploration process. In particular, we point out how the proposed approach realizes several important amplification strategies to support design space exploration.

This article focuses on a shape grammar, the rabo-de-bacalhau housing style, that was developed to enable the adaptation of existing houses to new requirements and most particular on the process of inference of the grammar. In the article we describe the process undertaken to develop the grammar and what the achievements of the transformation grammar are regarding the possibilities of a mass customization of a dwelling's rehabilitation work. The goal of this article is to describe and discuss how the designer's knowledge was encoded into shape rules. The process used to extract the architect's knowledge and to incorporate it into the transformation grammar enable us to abstract the designer's actions and to define a sequence of actions that can define a possible strategy of design. The proposed design methodology generates dwelling layouts that are legal because they follow the grammar language and adequate because they meet the a priori user and design requirements.

This paper introduces new research that seeks to develop low-cost, high quality, mass customizable building assembly systems that provide visually rich design variations for housing or other small structures. The building systems are intended to be tailored for particular cultures and communities by incorporating vernacular decorative design into the assembly design. Two complementary research areas are brought together in this work: shape grammars and digital fabrication. The visual, aesthetic aspects of the research are explored through shape grammars. The physical design and manufacturing aspects are explored through advanced digital design and fabrication technologies, and in particular, build on recent work on monomaterial assemblies with interlocking components that can be fabricated with computer numerical control machines and assembled easily by hand. The long-term objective of this research is the development of formal, visual–physical grammars with rules that generate complete computer-assisted design/computer-assisted manufacturing data for fabrication of full-scale components for assembly design variations. This paper reports on the first phase of this research: pilot studies for prototype assembly systems that incorporate vernacular languages from different parts of the world. The results of these studies are very promising, and demonstrate a spectrum of strategies for embedding visual properties in structural systems. Important next steps in this research are outlined. If successful, this work will lead to new solutions for low-cost, easily manufactured housing, which is especially critical in developing countries and for postdisaster environments. These new housing solutions will not only provide shelter but also support important cultural values through the integration of familiar visual design features. Beyond the specific context of housing and building assemblies, the research has the potential to impact the design and manufacture of designed artifacts on many scales and in many domains, especially in domains where visual aesthetics need to be considered jointly with physical, structural, or material requirements, and where design customization and variation is important.

This paper discusses the integration of knowledge bases and shape grammars for the generation of building models, covering interaction, system, and implementation. Knowledge-based and generative systems are combined to construct a method for characterizing existing buildings, in particular, their interior layouts based on exterior features and certain other parameters such as location and real dimensions. The knowledge-based model contains information about spatial use, organization, elements, and contextual information, with the shape grammar principally containing style rules. Buildings are analyzed and layouts are generated through communication and interaction between these two systems. The benefit of using an interactive system is that the complementary properties of the two schemes are employed to strengthen the overall process. Ontologies capture knowledge relating to architectural design principles, building anatomy, structure, and systems. Shape grammar rules embody change through geometric manipulation and transformation. Existing buildings are analyzed using this approach, and three-dimensional models are automatically generated. Two particular building types, the vernacular rowhouse and high-rise apartment building, both from Baltimore, Maryland, are presented to illustrate the process and for comparing the utilized methodologies.

Manufacturing process planning is a difficult problem with a prohibitively large search space. It is normally tackled by decomposing goal objects into features, and then sequencing features to obtain a plan. This paper investigates an alternative approach. The capabilities of a manufacturing process are represented by a formal language of shape, in which sentences correspond to manufacturable objects. The language is interpreted to describe process plans corresponding to the shape generation, complete with cost estimates. A macro layer that describes single operations of the machine is implemented on top of the formal language. The space it describes is searched by the generative simulated annealing algorithm, a stochastic search technique based on simulated annealing. Plans that are close to the optimum are generated in reasonable time.