Support for Irregular and Pedestal Terrains
Terrain preprocessing now supports irregular and pedestal geometries.
What problem does this solve?
Previously, ArchiWind preprocessing assumed a mostly circular terrain extent. When users uploaded:
- elongated or irregular site footprints
- GIS-derived meshes with sharp boundaries
- terrains sitting on vertically extruded “pedestals”
…the system often had to aggressively crop the terrain to fit a circular domain. This could lead to:
- only a subset of the user-provided terrain is being used in the simulation
- relevant terrain context outside the inscribed circle is being ignored
- a mismatch between the geometry uploaded and the geometry actually used for simulation
- increased difficulty interpreting wind results, since the 3D viewer showed geometry that was not fully accounted for in the computation
Before vs After — Visual Comparison
Below is a concrete example showing how the same project behaves before and after this update.
1. Geometry uploaded by the user
The user uploads a terrain with an irregular footprint and a pedestal-style extrusion.
2. Results before the update
Before this update, preprocessing would:
-
project the terrain to 2D
-
find the largest fully contained circle inside that projected surface
-
force the circle’s center to align with the geometric center of the terrain bounding box
Everything outside that circle was discarded and no longer used in the simulation. In practice, this led to:
-
large portions of the uploaded terrain are being ignored
-
loss of relevant upstream or lateral context
-
misleading boundary effects for elongated or offset sites
-
unstable preprocessing for pedestal geometries
3. Results after the update
With the new terrain-extension workflow:
- Irregular footprints are preserved
- Pedestal terrains are handled reliably
- All terrain data within the 450 m simulation radius is used, even for irregular geometries
- Terrain context is maintained up to the required simulation radius
- Results are stable and consistent
What changed under the hood? (High level)
You don’t need to do anything differently. Internally, ArchiWind now:
- projects a regular grid onto your terrain
- detects the true terrain boundary (even if non-circular)
- extends the terrain outward
Your original uploaded geometry is still what you see in the viewer and reports.
What does this mean for you?
- ✅ Upload irregular or elongated terrains without preparation
- ✅ Use pedestal or vertically extruded base geometries
- ✅ Fewer failed simulations during preprocessing
- ✅ No new settings, toggles, or workflow changes