Using AI for Sustainable Structural Design with Daisy and Autodesk Research

Design AI Systems (DAISY) is the first timber design software powered by artificial intelligence (AI). DAISY produces optimal, code-compliant designs in less than 10 minutes, saving engineers two to three hours a day, and reducing up to 80% of timber waste. Kratos is an Autodesk Research project using AI methods to rapidly evaluate many structural designs in multiple materials, including concrete. Solutions can optimize for monetary cost, carbon cost, or other objectives. DAISY and Kratos collaborated by using Kratos to calculate load-bearing walls in a timber structure, which Daisy can use as input to produce detailed floor plans. This leads to less concrete used in foundations, hence, cheaper and more sustainable designs. Sharing of algorithms was not feasible, so a “black box” approach was taken instead with only data formats shared. The result was that in the summer of 2021, DAISY and Kratos designed a timber floor in a house that was subsequently built in the United Kingdom. We will illustrate this in the session.