Branch 3D

The longest clear-span timber gridshell of its type in the world. The largest of the Taiyuan Botanical Garden Domes is a non-triangulated gridshell, resulting in our choice to use a light diagrid layer of nearly invisible, but carefully detailed cables and adjustable nodes to mitigate multi-modal snap-through buckling by stabilizing/organizing the buckling modes. A major challenge lay in how to tension the cables, given that they had to connect numerous nodes in a two way pattern. The problem was neatly solved by devising for each node a special casting with separate pieces joined with an adjusting bolt which could essentially “pull” tension into the cable net, by pulling the cables closer to the gridshell above, thereby lengthening the entire cable net. This project used an early iteration of Branch 3D to allow the thousands of complex part and piece drawings to be created rapidly. Delugan Meissl Associated Architects Photos: Light Chaser

All-wood nodes in the Makers' KUbe - a showcase of timber tectonics and traditional joinery. For the University of Kansas' new School of Architecture & Design, our engineers were challenged to imagine a mass timber structure with no steel connections or fasteners – all wood. Inspired by traditional Japanese joinery, the corner nodes are particularly complex, with optimized saw-tooth geometry used to transfer both tension and compression forces into the beams, columns, and braces. Critically, the joints are primarily tight-fit, requiring a high degree of precision and accuracy in detailing and fabrication. We had the opportunity to create this mockup of the larger building featuring the architecturally expressive “Hero Node”. It was modeled in Branch 3D and built in just 8 hours! BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group BNIM 📸: Graham Handford

If you're in DC for the AIA conference this week, check out our projects in the area.. and our booth! Discover how next-gen design software, creative engineering and DfMA will change how structures are built. We're at Booth 4244, in the WoodWorks area, and we're featuring Branch 3D, our in-house structural design, analysis and detailing software, through an interactive demo. Lucas Epp will present on June 6 alongside Kai-Uwe Bergmann, FAIA of BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group on the mass timber Makers' KUbe at The University of Kansas' open house, co-hosted by HKS. Registration is free at the link in the comments. Come to our booth on June 6-7 and chat with Lucas, Mark Porter PEng StructEng FIStructE FEC, Justin Brown, Blake Allen and Benjamin Epp! Featured projects: Southwest Neighborhood Library, 2020 Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 2010 Johns Hopkins University Student Center, 2024 Sycamore & Oak, 2022 40Ten Canton Office, 2022

The most boring job, structural design/analysis, is becoming more fun 😁 👉 Real-time adjustment with immediate feedback on building's cost and carbon footprint. 👉 Customizable design with Grasshopper 👉 Automatic shop drawing and BOM / CNC file generation Pretty cool. Check out Branch 3D Video credits: Lucas Epp, VP at StructureCraft 2D is against my religion! #3d #bim #engineering #technology #innovation

🚀 Meet Branch 3D, the next generation of structural design and manufacturing software. Built by an incredibly talented team (and currently hiring!) seated within StructureCraft and led by Lucas Epp and Marne Zahner, Branch has been used to deliver more than 600,000sqft of built projects. With an initial focus on mass timber, Branch cuts across traditional boundaries between design, manufacturing, and construction to create an integrated design platform that is a first for AEC software. 💡 Imagine: ● A building structure which resizes thousands of elements in real-time as you change massing, gridlines, or fire rating, enabling real-time cost and carbon feedback ● The full power of Grasshopper available to encode your custom building logic and design options ● A groundbreaking new Parametric Object in Rhino which embeds a Grasshopper script inside itself – a true “Family” object for Rhino! Ever made a GH script where you wanted to manually edit special cases in Rhino but still preserve these edits through parametric changes? ✅ ● Automatic (yet customizable!) shop drawing and BOM / CNC file generation capabilities for fully-detailed building elements, right inside Rhino ● Heads-up live CAM/manufacturing feedback that blurs traditional boundaries between design and production ● A relationship-based model that makes accessing contextual information easy for any building element or area 👥 If topics like these interest you... ● Real-time structural analysis revolutionizing early-stage feedback on building feasibility ● Open-source collaboration in the development of analysis and design algorithms ● Challenging existing engineering software and creating beautiful tools with tuned, modern UX (who says FE models need to be ugly?) ● Graph-based analysis tools that enable dynamic interactions and integrations ● Spatial acceleration data structures to create and analyze models with millions of detailed objects and blazing fast performance ● Relationship-first modeling to allow easy access to context ● Query languages and scripting interfaces for working with complex models ...and you’re a talented software developer, UI dev, or product manager interested in pushing forward the industry and working with some of the sharpest minds to do so – DM Lucas Epp or Marne Zahner! 🌍 Over the past 2.5 years, the Branch team has pushed 1000s of PRs and hundreds of thousands of lines of code – and in the process has created a framework for the future of building engineering and manufacturing software. 🤔 What feature excites you? Share your thoughts below! 💻 Want to try Branch on your next mass timber project? Let Lucas or Marne know. #SoftwareDevelopment #MassTimber #StructuralAnalysis #AECTech

This is a rare post and opportunity - something I've been waiting to do for quite some time. 🚀 Meet Branch 3D, the next generation of structural design and manufacturing software.  Built by an incredibly talented team (we’re hiring!) seated within StructureCraft, Branch has been used to deliver more than 600,000sqft of built projects. With an initial focus on mass timber, Branch cuts across traditional boundaries between design, manufacturing, and construction to create an integrated design platform that is a first for AEC software. 💡 Imagine: ● A building structure which resizes thousands of elements in real-time as you change massing, gridlines, or fire rating, enabling real-time cost and carbon feedback ● The full power of Grasshopper available to encode your custom building logic and design options ● A groundbreaking new Parametric Object in Rhino which embeds a Grasshopper script inside itself – a true “Family” object for Rhino! Ever made a GH script where you wanted to manually edit special cases in Rhino but still preserve these edits through parametric changes? ✅ ● Automatic (yet customizable!) shop drawing and BOM / CNC file generation capabilities for fully-detailed building elements, right inside Rhino ● Heads-up live CAM/manufacturing feedback that blurs traditional boundaries between design and production ● A relationship-based model that makes accessing contextual information easy for any building element or area 👥 If topics like these interest you... ● Real-time structural analysis revolutionizing early-stage feedback on building feasibility ● Open-source collaboration in the development of analysis and design algorithms ● Challenging existing engineering software and creating beautiful tools with tuned, modern UX (who says FE models need to be ugly?) ● Graph-based analysis tools that enable dynamic interactions and integrations ● Spatial acceleration data structures to create and analyze models with millions of detailed objects and blazing fast performance ● Relationship-first modeling to allow easy access to context ● Query languages and scripting interfaces for working with complex models ...and you’re a talented software developer, UI dev, or product manager interested in pushing forward the industry and working with some of the sharpest minds to do so – DM Marne Zahner or myself! 🌍 Over the past 2.5 years, the Branch team has pushed 1000s of PRs and hundreds of thousands of lines of code – and in the process has created a framework for the future of building engineering and manufacturing software. 🤔 What feature excites you? Share your thoughts below! 💻And if you want to try Branch on your next mass timber project, get in touch!

🚀 Meet Branch, the next generation of structural design and manufacturing software. Built by an incredibly talented team (we’re hiring!) seated within StructureCraft and led by Lucas Epp and Marne Zahner, Branch has been used to deliver more than 600,000sqft of built projects. With an initial focus on mass timber, Branch cuts across traditional boundaries between design, manufacturing, and construction to create an integrated design platform that is a first for AEC software. 💡 Imagine: ● A building structure which resizes thousands of elements in real-time as you change massing, gridlines, or fire rating, enabling real-time cost and carbon feedback ● The full power of Grasshopper available to encode your custom building logic and design options ● A groundbreaking new Parametric Object in Rhino which embeds a Grasshopper script inside itself – a true “Family” object for Rhino! Ever made a GH script where you wanted to manually edit special cases in Rhino but still preserve these edits through parametric changes? ✅ ● Automatic (yet customizable!) shop drawing and BOM / CNC file generation capabilities for fully-detailed building elements, right inside Rhino ● Heads-up live CAM/manufacturing feedback that blurs traditional boundaries between design and production ● A relationship-based model that makes accessing contextual information easy for any building element or area 👥 If topics like these interest you... ● Real-time structural analysis revolutionizing early-stage feedback on building feasibility ● Open-source collaboration in the development of analysis and design algorithms ● Challenging existing engineering software and creating beautiful tools with tuned, modern UX (who says FE models need to be ugly?) ● Graph-based analysis tools that enable dynamic interactions and integrations ● Spatial acceleration data structures to create and analyze models with millions of detailed objects and blazing fast performance ● Relationship-first modeling to allow easy access to context ● Query languages and scripting interfaces for working with complex models ...and you’re a talented software developer, UI dev, or product manager interested in pushing forward the industry and working with some of the sharpest minds to do so – DM Lucas or Marne! 🌍 Over the past 2.5 years, the Branch team has pushed 1000s of PRs and hundreds of thousands of lines of code – and in the process has created a framework for the future of building engineering and manufacturing software. 🤔 What feature excites you? Share your thoughts below! 💻And if you want to try Branch on your next mass timber project, get in touch! #SoftwareDevelopment #MassTimber #StructuralAnalysis