Abstract:

The subject of Descriptive Geometry is taught on the first and second semester on the Professional Undergraduate Study Programme of Civil Engineering, at the University of Applied Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia. That subject is considered fundamental for spatial understanding of all building constructions and different building elements but is often regarded as not enough of a Civil engineering subject. Its dominant use in student final thesis on undergraduate or graduate levels is often not encouraged, so it is not often used, and when it is used it is only as support knowledge for some Civil engineering theses.

Since the rapid development of Computer Aided Design (CAD) modelling software in recent years, and its high percent of use in all areas of Civil engineering, there is a constant need for the introduction of CAD modelling software in as many courses as possible on Civil engineering study programmes. On the Professional graduate study programme of Civil Engineering, on the course of Modern building technologies we are teaching students how to implement modern technologies not only into the building process but also into the design process. Modern buildings tend to have unique designs and designers try to visually differ them from other buildings in any way possible, so there is a constant influx of new designs which were never previously used, and students must be prepared for them.

During the design process, many variants of the building design often must be made, and that makes the design process a very iterative process and doing it without CAD modelling software is often tiresome, unfeasible, and sometimes even simply impossible. One way of making variants of a building design is to make an active parametric model of a building, which can be swiftly changed by variating the parameters. A tool which can be used for making such parametric models is a Visual Programming Language (VPL) addon called Grasshopper for a very popular CAD modelling software Rhinoceros 3D.

The purpose of this paper is to show that knowledge from fundamental courses like Descriptive Geometry, combined with knowledge from more specific later year courses like Modern Building Technologies, and combined with modern CAD modelling software (in this case Grasshopper and Rhinoceros 3D) is more than possible, and that Descriptive geometry knowledge is more than fundamental and can be contemplated on a much higher level than usual for some Civil engineering theses.

Keywords:

Descriptive geometry, parametric modelling, master theses, VPL, Grasshopper.