Computer-Aided Design and Construction of Glued Laminated Timber Structure

The paper presents the computer-aided design and construction of a large glued laminated timber structure in Aosta, Italy. The structure was completely computer modeled with in-house developed software, which considers both torsion and curvature constraints of timber. Further proprietary software was used to develop, on a plane, the shape of each timber layer without torsion and curvature. The profiles were converted into CNC instructions to cut the timber leaves. To assemble the leaves on-site temporary iron scaffolding was constructed. To manage and verify this process, the site manager used the coordinates from the CAD model, converted into the digital format compatible with the total station.