The Evolution of Design Iteration

Technology adoption in the construction industry has led to design iteration becoming a major and complex component of the design phase.

New technology enables architects to regularly and quickly iterate a building layout as they receive feedback from all of the project's stakeholders. The feedback is generally in relation to appearance, budget, and design challenges.

The design iteration can be visualized below:

Every change made by the architect has a knock-on effect on the engineering team's designs. Unsurprisingly, this is one of the leading causes of errors in engineering designs.

Why does design iteration cause errors in engineering designs? On large projects, design iteration can happen weekly and be ongoing for years.

Traditionally, engineers have to re-start their design and calculation process every time they receive a new architectural design or have requests from other members of the design team.

Alternatively, engineers oversize their design the first time to allow capacity for these unknown but expected changes.

Both options have inherent risks and are unsustainable solutions.

How does H2X deal with design iteration?

In H2X you can make design changes easily. Keeping up with design iteration is fast and the outputs are accurate. This overcomes both of the challenges inherent with the traditional workflows - inefficient and/or inaccurate.

If the architect sends you a new layout, simply upload the new file and drag and drop the existing plumbing components to suit the new layout. An example of this is shown in the video below:

If the mechanical engineer requests a continuous flow rate of 30 GPM (1.9 L/sec) for their cooling towers on the roof, simply add the required pipework, valves, and node:

As you can see in the videos, every result in the project is instantly recalculated after you make the changes.

How do you currently deal with design iteration? If you would like to try designing with H2X, you can start a free trial today and book in for a live demonstration with our development team here.