Open Access

Stefan Junk, Christopher Müller, Marco Binninger

• The use of architectural models is a long-proven method for the visualization of designs. More recently, powerful 3D printers have enabled the rapid and cost-effective additive manufacturing (AM) of textured architectural models. The use of AM technology to sample terraced houses in a specific use case (sampling center with more than 1200 customers per year) is examined within this contribution.The use of architectural models is a long-proven method for the visualization of designs. More recently, powerful 3D printers have enabled the rapid and cost-effective additive manufacturing (AM) of textured architectural models. The use of AM technology to sample terraced houses in a specific use case (sampling center with more than 1200 customers per year) is examined within this contribution. The aim is to offer customers with limited spatial imagination assistance in the form of detailed architectural models of the whole house, which are divided into different modules. For this purpose, the structure of the terraced house is first analysed and examined for flexible design elements. The implementation of different variants of each floor should serve as a basis for the customer's decision on design and equipment. Thus, the architectural models are additively manufactured using Polyjet modeling. The necessary CAAD-data and interfaces, the technical possibilities and limits of this approach as well as the resulting costs are analyzed. The results of the AM process are evaluated to determine their applicability for the sampling of terraced houses. In addition, the evaluation will show that the additively manufactured architectural models will allow a more precise visualization of the building and thus a faster understanding of the design choices.…