Abstract
Traditionally, structural design has been conceived as a process of adapting well-known prototypes to specific contexts under requirements for repetition and symmetry. Now, shape grammars provide a much more flexible way of specifying design languages for exploration, CAD/CAM techniques loosen requirements for repetition and symmetry, and simulated annealing supplies an effective way to direct searches for structural solutions under these conditions. This paper discusses the problem of free-form structural design, shows how shape annealing techniques (which combine shape grammars and simulated annealing) can successfully be applied to them, and concludes by speculating about future structural design systems which will combine simulated annealing with the affordances of the World Wide Web.
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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Mitchell, W.J. (1998). Articulate design of free-form structures. In: Smith, I. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Structural Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1454. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0030454
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0030454
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