SBIR Phase II: A Digital Design-Delivery System for the Large-scale Deployment of Mass Timber Building Technologies

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to accelerate the digitization of the AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industry, while democratizing the use of sustainable building materials. The technology is a first-of-its-kind Computer Aided Design for Manufacturing (CADfM) software. It enables architects to design for code compliance, cost management, and environmental sustainability. The proposed software will enable greater flexibility, lower cost, greater project speed, wider product selection, and enhanced human creativity in design. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will enable architectural design-for-manufacturing. Current design processes lack the pre-rationalization of manufacturing. To deliver sustainable, economically efficient and high-density buildings, architects need tools to quickly test design options in a data-rich space. Manufacturers need their products digitally integrated into architects’ early designs, to prevent value-engineering and rework. This software is uniquely built on a game engine, and hosts a geometry kernel with smart building elements (façade, corridor, spaces, etc.) aware of their type, purpose and adjacencies, permitting data communication between assemblies and integration with data libraries for rapid evaluation of potential design changes and estimation of associated costs and effects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.