TestFit and Thornton Tomasetti Put Structural Engineer in Architects’ Pocket
Roopinder Tara posted on March 30, 2021 |
Columns sized and placed with consideration of architects’ plans
Save your parking spaces by putting columns between them with TestFit. (Picture courtesy of TestFit)
This might be your first assignment at an AEC firm: take a parking space under a high-rise multiuse tower and draw the parking spaces. Easy enough, you think. It can be done in AutoCAD using just 2D. You turn in your plan. You think nothing more of it — until you see how the structural engineers have placed columns smack in the middle of your neatly ordered parking spaces. They have reduced the number of vehicles that can be accommodated – except perhaps the number of motorcycles and scooters. The structural engineers pull rank. Their columns might as well have been embedded in concrete. Here there are. Deal with it.
You fantasize about a better world, one where the structural engineer cares about architect’s plan. Failing that, how about if they could work with you while you were planning?
Clifton Harness, founder and CEO of Austin-based startup TestFit, offers a solution.
“What if you could have a structural engineer in your pocket?”
Moving the parking spaces with TestFit moves the columns as well. (Picture courtesy of TestFit)
The structural engineer in the pocket is actually the accumulated knowledge of Thornton Tomasetti, a New York architectural…