Panelizing Tool for Envelope Retrofits (PaTER)

PaTER helps you turn point clouds into ultra-accurate building models that properly capture warped and buckled facades and other non-idealities. Developed from the ground up to meet the strict accuracy requirements of recladding and overcladding projects and other cutting-edge construction needs, PaTER makes it easy to model buildings with millimeter-level precision. PaTER’s flexible tools let you model every little detail — buckled facades, sagging roofs, warped edges, and other imperfections in older buildings can all be modeled with extreme precision.

PaTER produces dimensionally accurate shop drawings for panel fabrication in recladding and overcladding projects. PaTER’s high dimensional accuracy eliminates the need for panel size adjustment during the installation process, allowing envelope retrofit projects to be finished faster, with less re-work and lower costs.

In addition to producing dimensionally accurate models, PaTER features panel layout generation tools that enable architects and designers to create aesthetically pleasing panel layouts for recladding or overcladding projects in minutes, not days. These tools allow designers to play “what-if” games by adjusting the minimum and maximum panel sizes and other constraints, making it easy for them to find the optimal panel layout for their project.

See how PaTER can help you replace expensive, time-consuming hand measurements and field work with an efficient, streamlined digital workflow for your next construction or retrofit project:

PaTER is a fully integrated modeling solution, with specialized, purpose-built tools for each stage of its unique modeling workflow. PaTER’s automated algorithms automatically detect facades and surfaces in your building point cloud and fit accurate planes to them, helping you set up a basic wireframe model and generate deviation maps quickly. The AutoRefine tool automatically adjusts the corners of detected surfaces to match the local geometry of the point cloud, and automatically adjusts facade and surface edges to precisely match any buckling, bumps, or curvature in the real building.

PaTER gives you the flexibility to model complex surfaces as well as subtle details and imperfections, all wrapped in a simple and intuitive interface. Simply click one of the corners of a surface to start moving it anywhere in 3D space with your mouse or arrow keys. Click an edge of a facade or surface, and you can quickly change its shape by adjusting a set of “source points” along the edge that PaTER synthesizes to create the edge. Geometric feature visualizations make facade edges, bumps, and other details in the building geometry easier to see, so you can precisely line corners and edges up with the building point cloud.

Innovative features like Nudge Along Surface — which lets you move a corner point along a wall or surface with your arrow keys, in increments as small as a millimeter — make it quick and easy to move surface corners into precisely the right position in 3D space and align them with the point cloud; edge source points can be adjusted in the same way.

All this flexibility doesn’t mean working with PaTER is complicated or cumbersome — with its uncluttered, easy-to-navigate interface and tools purpose-built for high-accuracy modeling, PaTER is easy to learn and simple to use.

With PaTER’s intuitive window delineation tool, you can quickly pull up an uncluttered, high-resolution view of one or more of the windows, doors, or fixtures on a facade. You can switch between several different geometric feature visualizations that make window borders, frames, and other details much more pronounced, making it easy to accurately trace the outlines of windows, doors, and fixtures.

Just like surface corners and edges, window corners can be edited and nudged around with millimeter-level precision.

Specialized features make it easy to create accurate outlines for more complex window shapes, like arched or curved windows and windows that are flush with the facade edge.

PaTER was developed with older, “imperfect” buildings in mind, letting you model complex details and non-idealities that are cumbersome or impossible to model in other software. Having tackled convoluted and crumbling facades, PaTER is ready for any building.

Everything you model in PaTER — including complex surface edges and fenestration outlines — can be seamlessly exported as an industry-standard DXF file ready for use in Autodesk apps and other popular CAD software.

For more advanced workflows, you can also export detailed mesh models as OBJ files. These models have a mesh-like structure that’s automatically derived from the point cloud, which captures the subtle curvature and unevenness of walls and surfaces, and include the deviation information shown on deviation maps. You can adjust the density of the mesh structure to get exactly the level of detail you need.

With just a couple of clicks, you can generate a deviation map that shows the buckling and unevenness in a particular facade and makes it easy to identify the proudest points on that facade, perfect for guiding panel installation.

PaTER can automatically generate panel layouts for any building in seconds, taking into account common panel manufacturing constraints like the minimum and maximum possible panel dimensions and constraints on the placement of cutouts for windows. You can easily experiment with different parameters and play “what-if” games to rapidly find the optimal panel layout for your project.