TestFit Release - 5.2 - Power Plants & Generative Design Updates

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Generative Design Updates

Import Zoning Data into Generative Design

You can now automatically create filters from zoning data within Generative Design, ensuring the AI-generated layouts work with your local zoning regulations.

TestFit-Generative-Design-Zoning-Data

Set Unit & Parking Mix Goals

For better control, you can set unit mix and parking mix as goals within Generative Design. For unit mix, you can specify:

  • Number of unit types per building
  • Number of beds
  • Target unit size
  • Target percentage allocation for each unit type

For parking mix, you can define:

  • Parking stall width and depth
  • ADA car and van percentage or parking ratio requirements

TestFit will then generate optimal building layouts based on the parameters set. If your company has existing standards, this feature ensures that you’re providing design options that meet your unit and parking requirements consistently, without starting from scratch each time.

 

TestFit-Generative-Design-Unit-Parking-Mix

Data Maps Updates

View Context Buildings on 3D Terrain

Building on our previous release, you can now view context buildings around your site on top of 3D terrain, giving you a more realistic representation of the surrounding areas.

TestFit-Context-Buildings-on-3D-Terrain

 

Access US Power Plants

We’ve added a new data layer—US Power Plants—within Data Maps. By toggling this feature on, you’ll gain access to:

  • Location of power plants across the country
  • Type of energy sources for each power plant
  • Utility provider for each power plant
  • Total and installed capacity of each power plant

This addition allows you to assess regional energy infrastructure with accurate locations and detailed information about power plants and their energy sources.

 

TestFit-Data-Maps-Power-Plants

Building Types Updates

Improved Drive Circulation for Garden Sites

 -The new feature enhances garden drive circulation by introducing sub-regions specifically designed for irregularly shaped sites. It also offers improved manual mode adjustments and better connectivity between smaller site areas, resulting in more efficient layouts and optimized density. 

TestFit-Garden-Circulation

 

Data Center Yard Depth

To give you greater flexibility, ​​you can set different yard depths for front or back on cross-loaded Data Centers.

 

TestFit-Data-Center-Yard-Depth

General Updates

Better Shadows in 3D

We’ve upgraded our 3D visualization with better shadows using Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO), bringing more depth to your designs.

 

TestFit-SSAO-Shadows

Other Updates:

  • Generative Design with Region: Open Generative Design when creating a region easily with a new button.
  • Generative Design Option: Change the selected Generative Design option quickly with up and down keys.
  • Generative Design Option: Toggle to disable remote deals or remote presets.
  • Generative Design Option: Toggle to enable a default preset.
  • Scheme: Change the selected scheme with left and right keys.
  • Parking in Preset: Parking is now automatically removed from a preset if the parking categories are turned off.
  • Garden: Create massing and parking loading options for garden buildings.
  • Better Mac Performance: Run the TestFit app 20-30% faster on newer Macs with added support for universal binaries on Mac.
  • Overall Performance: RSD files are now significantly smaller.

 

Reported Issues & Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed a crash that could occur when solving townhouse sites.
  • Improved UI performance with Generative Design active.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause custom stalls to not render correctly.
  • Fixed shaky camera height when modifying a site when 3D terrain is on.
  • Fixed parking sometimes generating too many drive spine segments near corners.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause some areas of a parking region to not populate with stalls.
  • Fixed a bug with subregion generation for parking, townhouse, and garden that would cause subregions to incorrectly merge in some cases.
  • Fixed inconsistencies in interaction with garden stalls that shouldn't be interactable.
  • Fixed missing or incorrect shadows with 3D terrain and context buildings.
  • Fixed the gurban solver sometimes creating overlapping geometry.
  • Fixed inline spaces in uncovered parking areas not having roofs or facades.
  • Improved performance of mass-based solver.
  • Fixed some elements not being interactable in-canvas.
  • Fixed some instances of parking and townhouse solvers generating empty pavement instead of useful things.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in the data center configurator.
  • Fixed duplicate dependent fill spaces on industrial sites.
  • Fixed edge case that would cause parking and townhouse drive aisles to solve incorrectly.
  • Fixed back-to-back townhouses sometimes not generating the second row of houses.
  • Fixed invalid elevation with regions.
  • Fixed extraneous drive nodes being added to townhouse sites with max block length.
  • Fixed townhouses with significantly larger width over depth failing to solve.
  • Fixed inconsistent behavior in layer grouping undo/redo.
  • Improved performance of solves with many buildings.
  • Fixed some situations in which the townhouse solver would fail.
  • Fixed manually adjusted industrial buildings not contributing to statistics under some circumstances.
  • Fixed unit mix being set to the average every time the database changes.
  • Fixed missing default garden attachment on MacOS.
  • Fixed sometimes not being able to interact with manual mode spines.
  • Fixed a temporary UI slowdown when Generative Design finds no options due to category filters.
  • Fixed inline spaces not being draggable in 3D.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause data center and warehouse geometry to be malformed.
  • Fixed regions rendering at the incorrect elevation.
  • Fixed townhouse endcap units being mirrored incorrectly.
  • Fixed a bug that caused one townhouse pivot to be treated differently than others (typically causing it to fail to solve) when manually editing townhouse buildings.
  • Fixed expanded tabulation being omitted for surface parking sites.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed back-to-back spacing to be ignored by certain rows in the improved townhouse and garden configurators.
  • Fixed incorrect elevation for spaces.
  • Fixed incorrect elevation for spaces with voids.
  • Fixed spaces with merge levels being handled inconsistently for stats.
  • Changed default sunlight hour to 10 AM.
  • Fixed inline parking spaces sometimes failing to solve when holes are present.