Computational design - Simulation in virtual environments

Rapid developments in technology, growing number of regulations, increased complexity in building products and processes and high quality demands towards results, are all examples of developments which manoeuvre architects in a direction with the potential danger that design solutions will be more and more based on intuition or narrowed down to just morphological and easthetical issues. Although these two issues are essential for design, the adaptation and integration of other disciplines are needed regarding to the developments mentioned above. Criteria like costs, structural and thermal behaviour and many other aspects should be taken into account, preferably in the early stage of design and not just during analysis later in the process. The need for proper design supporting tools to handle complexity is inevitable. This paper is about the research and development of a framework of supporting interrelated tools. The framework is based on the use of a fully digital prototype and is called VR-DIS, an acronym for Virtual Reality Distributed Interactive Simulation. The concept is based upon the awareness and integration of three key technologies: virtual reality, simulation and product modelling.