Autodesk Hackathon

Project description

Formicae is a project born out of the 2024 Forma Hackathon, a two-day Extendathon hosted by Autodesk’s Forma team at their Oslo office on February 13–14, 2024. The event brought together developers, designers, and AEC innovators from across Europe and beyond, all eager to explore Forma’s capabilities and build tools that extend its open platform. With a strong emphasis on sustainability, data-driven workflows, and collaborative development, the hackathon served as a dynamic environment for innovation and experimentation.

Developed by Team Formicae, the project aims to bridge the gap between Autodesk Forma and Rhino, by embedding wind prediction analysis directly into the Rhino design environment. This allows architects and designers to evaluate climate factors—such as wind impact—early in the conceptual phase, enabling smarter, more sustainable urban design decisions from the start.

Throughout the hackathon, our team, like many others, was energized by the openness and support of Autodesk's Forma engineers. From the moment we arrived, the atmosphere was welcoming and collaborative. Mentors were readily available, keynotes offered insights into Forma’s development philosophy, and participants were encouraged to ask questions and iterate fast. Rather than focusing on polished presentations, the hackathon prioritized building and testing bold ideas—even in rough form.

We saw an opportunity to focus on environmental integration, inspired by Forma’s built-in climate analytics. Our goal was to provide Rhino users with real-time wind feedback, empowering them to modify geometry and orientation within the familiar Grasshopper environment while tapping into Forma’s predictive simulation engine. By the end of the second day, we had a working proof-of-concept that securely connected both platforms using OAuth authentication and delivered usable wind analysis results inside Rhino.

Formicae embodies the core spirit of the hackathon—rapid innovation, cross-platform collaboration, and sustainability as a design imperative. While still in early development, it opens the door to making environmental analysis an integrated part of every urban planning conversation. We’re proud of what we built in just 48 hours, and even more excited about where it can go next.

Background

A few of us work as environmental and simulation specialists in our day-to-day roles, often developing tools to enhance how we assess the environmental impact of buildings. As toolmakers, we are always seeking ways to weave technology into architectural practice to enable more robust, integrated analysis.

Rhino remains one of the most commonly used modeling platforms in our workflow, but it lacks built-in access to advanced simulation tools. Forma, on the other hand, offers progressive simulation engines—including machine learning models for wind comfort—and an open API framework. We saw this as an opportunity to combine the strengths of both tools.

Formicae was created to connect these environments. By leveraging Forma’s wind comfort ML model and embedding it into Rhino via Grasshopper, we aimed to build a streamlined, accessible workflow that supports real-time environmental decision-making directly within design tools architects already use.

How does it work?

To use Formicae, you first need an existing project in Autodesk Forma. This project provides the base context for simulations—including location, terrain, and built environment data.

Next, you model your building geometry in Rhino, using Grasshopper to define the architectural elements and desired analysis parameters. Formicae then allows you to define a grid of points across your site or facade where wind predictions will be queried.

Once set up, a request is sent from Rhino to Forma’s wind prediction service. Forma’s ML model processes the geometry and contextual data to provide wind comfort estimates for each grid point. The results are returned and visualized directly in Rhino, allowing you to iterate on the design with real-time environmental feedback.

This seamless connection makes it easy to evaluate wind conditions early and often, improving the environmental performance of your project from the conceptual stage onward.

1. The user triggers wind analysis directly from Rhino, selecting geometry and location.
2. Using 3-legged OAuth2 authentication, Formicae securely connects to Forma’s API.
3. Relevant model and site data is packaged and sent to Forma.
4. Forma returns simulation results—such as wind flow and velocity fields—based on its internal prediction engine.
5. Results are visualized directly inside Grasshopper, allowing the user to respond in real-time by adjusting design parameters.

This live loop between the two tools reduces the need to manually export/import data or switch software contexts. Design decisions can now be informed by real environmental feedback, all within the early conceptual phase.

Features

• 3-Legged Authentication: Ensures secure access and data exchange between Forma and Rhino, leveraging robust OAuth2 protocols to protect project integrity.
• Streamlined Connectivity: Facilitates a direct and efficient API link from Rhino to Forma and vice versa, simplifying data flow and enabling real-time feedback.
• Wind Prediction Analysis: Incorporates Forma’s climate engine to simulate wind impact directly within your Rhino workflows, helping guide sustainable design decisions.

Note: We are still calibrating the wind results shown in Rhino against Forma’s native UI outputs. The analysis should be considered indicative rather than final.

How to use Formicae

Before using Formicae, ensure your development environment meets the following requirements:

• Rhino Installation: Formicae is a Grasshopper-based plugin. Rhino 7 is required. Rhino 8 compatibility is not yet tested.
• Swiftlet Integration: Formicae depends on Swiftlet to handle web requests within Grasshopper. Download Swiftlet
• jSwan: A JSON parsing library for Grasshopper. Used to interpret the response data from Forma. Download jSwan

Having these components installed ensures full functionality and connectivity.

Loading the Extension

To load the Formicae extension in Forma, use the following Extension ID:

, "b8b53625-9454-4330-8cee-893098f21803", to add it to your project.

... check out the repo here