Applications

Automatic Piping
A* Algorithm in Buildings

Georgia Institute of Technology
2016

In collaboration with:
Dr. Dennis Shelden
School of Architecture
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The project Automatic Routing is an experimental project which is aiming to solving the problem of piping in buildings, or, even more, for any routing problems encountered in design. The algorithm adopted in this project is the path finding algorithm, A* algorithm, which is guaranteeing a shortest path with given start point and end point of the path. The program implemented here can produce a routing solution for infinite pipes as long as the computation performance is allowed. As well as this program is able to deal with any obstacles in the space, that is, the pipes will pass around the obstacles if the obstacles are on the way from start point to the end point. Furthermore, this program also deals with the orientation of the start point and end point because the start points, and endpoints of pipes have orientations. This project is implemented in a small scale as a pioneer project; however, the algorithm can be easily scaled up for practical cases.