Data Visualisation in Structural Engineering for a Guidance-Based Design Process

This paper presents data visualisation in structural engineering for comparing different design alternatives during the conceptual design phase. By having the information of all design proposals at hand, the designer is able to make informed design decisions. Data visualisation is used because it enables the designer to have a synthesized overview of all the design proposals and to make quick, intuitive and well-informed design decisions during the early design phases. Indeed, when a lot of design alternatives are to be compared, it becomes difficult to deal with these large amounts of structural information: internal forces, cross-sections, structural behaviour, structural efficiency etc. This paper presents and investigates a novel approach.