Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio: computational design tools for every engineer
CORE studio, the research and development group inside Thornton Tomasetti, builds computational design and machine learning tools for engineers across the firm. Its Application Development team uses ShapeDiver to turn Grasshopper definitions into browser apps that any engineer can open from the company intranet, with no Rhino licence and no local installation.
More than 30 AI and ML tools now sit on CORE studio's ShapeDiver organisation page. They include Asterisk, a structural design platform with predictive models for steel, concrete and mass timber buildings, and a family of micro apps for trusses, shear walls, columns, slabs and glass. Results export to SAP and ETABS for validation and to PDF and Excel for reporting, so the apps plug into existing engineering workflows.
Key Facts
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Business Impact
- 30+ AI/ML tools deployed firm wide
- Optioneering cut from days to hours
- New apps built in days, not months
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Tools Used in the Case Study
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ShapeDiver
ShapeDiver turns Grasshopper definitions into secure web apps and 3D configurators that engineers, architects, clients and fabrication partners run in any browser, with no Rhino licence and no access to the underlying script. AEC firms such as Thornton Tomasetti, Ramboll, Haskoning and Walter P Moore use it to share computational design tools across offices, automate drawings and production files, and connect parametric models to their own software through APIs.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper 3D is the visual programming environment included with Rhino for computational and parametric design. Architects, engineers, façade specialists, and fabricators connect components on a canvas to generate geometry, process data, and test design variables without building every option manually. It works directly with Rhino’s modeling environment and can extend into BIM, analysis, optimization, and fabrication workflows through official integrations, scripting, and plugins.
User Experience
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Why this tool/tech was selected
CORE studio needed a way to put Grasshopper based tools in the hands of every engineer at Thornton Tomasetti without turning each one into a web development project. ShapeDiver lets the team publish straight from Grasshopper: the definition is uploaded, App Builder generates the interface, and the app is embedded in the company intranet with an iframe.
Engineers with little front end experience can release production tools on their own, and computation runs in the cloud, so users need neither Rhino nor a local install. App Builder components let the team shape the interface, add charts and control exports without writing a separate web application. The result is a fast route from a working prototype to a tool the whole firm can use, while the Grasshopper logic stays protected.
Challenges the Client Faced before
- Grasshopper scripts stayed with the few specialists who could run them.
- Software licences and local installs limited who could use each tool.
- Sharing files across offices was slow and error prone.
- Raw script outputs needed manual cleanup before they could be shown to clients.
- Every new web tool required a development cycle of weeks or months.
The previous method used
Before ShapeDiver, a Grasshopper tool reached colleagues in one of two ways. Either the definition was shared as a file, which required a Rhino licence and scripting knowledge to run, or it was rebuilt as a custom web application, which needed front end developers and hosted infrastructure and stretched release timelines to weeks or months for every tool.
Time / Money saved & the Business Impact.
With ShapeDiver, CORE studio has deployed more than 30 AI and ML tools across Thornton Tomasetti and made them available to every engineer through the intranet. Structural optioneering that used to take days now runs in hours, because engineers explore options in the browser while computation runs in the cloud.
New tools are no longer gated by web development. The glass designer app for the facades practice was built in a few days with App Builder instead of the weeks a custom front end would have required. Results flow into SAP and ETABS for validation and out to PDF and Excel for reporting, so the apps fit into existing engineering workflows instead of creating a parallel one. The team spends its time on engineering logic and machine learning rather than on hosting, licences and interfaces.
Customer Quote
"ShapeDiver drastically lowers the barrier to publishing tools." Eesha Jain, Computational Designer, CORE studio, Thornton Tomasetti
Additional Information
Thornton Tomasetti presented its ShapeDiver apps alongside Ramboll, Haskoning and Walter P Moore in the webinar "Grasshopper at Scale: Building Engineering Apps with ShapeDiver" (March 2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQsgC6cdZhY
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