Architectural Engineering Applications Of Rapid Prototyping

In today’s construction industry, with the introduction of new materials, free- form shapes of buildings, special problems with historical preservation and even buildings with very large components that move, there are many new challenges for the architectural engineer. This paper highlights some of the work done at Milwaukee School of Engineering that links the work of architectural engineers with our Rapid Prototyping Center. This work started as research under the Research Experience for Undergraduates in Solid Freeform Fabrication program at MSOE. This is a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Projects have ranged from replication of historical decorative plaster details and writing code to translate drawing files into a form that can be read by the RP machines to modeling a building designed for Milwaukee School of Engineering by Santiago Calatrava. A side benefit of this program has been realized in our Senior Design course, AE450, where student teams design a building for a real client. Models of these designs, which used to take at least three weeks to fabricate, are now completed sometimes in as little time as five days. This has proven to be a definite benefit to our clients as well as a better use of student time.