Visualization of Design Data in the Wild: Interactive Evaluation and Exploration of Combined Performance and Geometric Data

With the growth of computational design, geometric and performance-based design data has become increasingly important. Computation empowers designers to generate designs based on specific qualitative features, or to evaluate their performance based on user interests. This work presents a visualization framework that pairs performance mapping with geometry representations to promote exploration of multi-dimensional design spaces, without requiring an underlying parameterization. This is achieved through the use of design competition data which is presented as a hybrid of formal and intuitive design for which objectives of quantitative and qualitative performance hold value. Specifically, this is illustrated with two competition case studies: the SimJEB dataset, a crowd-sourced dataset of engine bracket designs and their respective finite-element simulation results, and entries from the 1890 Tower of London design competition. This approach has use in design applications in which it is desirable to quantitatively and qualitatively assess performance in a sizable design space.