Feature releases
& enhancements

Design Generator AI – Carpark Generator

A new typology has been added to the design generator. You can now create parking lots that adapt to the most difficult sites while still aggressively going for maximum car spots.

Entry, exit, egress, stairs, elevator, ramps and customisable height are all accounted for in Archistar’s carpark generator.

Drawing Tools – Drag, Rotate & Adjust Apartments

The Drawing Tools editor allows you to either design buildings on a blank site; or choose your favourite generated design and edit it from there. This has been requested for years and we are glad to release this so you can gain unparalleled control over generative design. A huge win for Human + AI design!

Design Generator AI – Draw Roads

You can now select a site on the ‘My Projects’ tab and split it up with customisable roads. Draw on the site and set your road/path widths.

Select any portion and generate whatever you’d like on it. The example picture shows highly clustered townhouses on the bottom portion and more spacious townhouses on the top.

Trustworthy Data – Request Manual Update

You will now see a small flag next to every data value on the Archistar platform. Click it to request an update of any planning rule. Provide your source and our Archistar town planners will manually double check the value against Government documents. Archistar is the only platform that combines the power of Government planning rules with the smarts of local area experts!

Advanced Filter – By Permitted Use

We now allow users to filter through the hundreds of unique permitted use classifications in Australia. Search for terms like ‘carpark’, ‘medical centre’, ‘residential aged care facility’, ‘convenience store’, etc. and we’ll highlight the matching sites on the map. This is especially useful for specialised developers looking for their next site.

Data Layer – Australian Council Boundaries

Many clients work in specific councils or LGAs and need to know exactly where one council starts and ends. We have released a new visual map Layer that you can turn on or off that shows the boundaries of each council.

Design Generator AI – Grouping Townhouses

You can now group townhouse types together! While our townhouse generator by default recommends shuffled townhouse types that give you the best performance in lot mix, ‘grouping same townhouse types together’ allows you to go after a clean look of matching townhouses on your land.

Design Generator AI – Cul-de-sacs

We have taught the AI another design strategy that is commonly used in suburban areas. While they aren’t the most efficient strategies in terms of land coverage, it is an essential strategy that the AI needs to learn to increase its creativity.

Partner Integration – Equifax Title Searches (NSW & QLD)

We have expanded our extremely competitive Title Search offering to cover the entire eastern seaboard. Simply click to order and the document will be in your selected email inbox in a matter of minutes. We are continuing to work with our partners to get full national coverage.

Partner Integration – NSW & QLD Spatial Digital Twin

Any Archistar generated design can be exported and uploaded to the NSW & QLD Government Spatial Digital Twin. Witness generative design and digital twin work in perfect harmony, allowing you to test dozens of building strategies while overlaying rich data such as public transport, utilities, shadows and more.

Partner Integration – Equifax Title Searches (VIC)

Starting with Victoria, we are proud to provide Title Searches at one of the lowest prices in the market. Simply click to order and the document will be in your selected email inbox in a matter of minutes. Expect to see the ability to purchase Title Searches for the rest of Australia very soon!

Data Visualisation – Melbourne City Development Activity Model

We now have the Melbourne City Development Activity Model on the Archistar platform. This is a beautiful visualisation layer that helps deliver transparency about upcoming developments in Melbourne City. This was a very easy request that we turned around in a day. Notify us of other publicly available data sets that you think would be great to have on the Archistar map!

Data Visualisation – 1m Contours for NSW & VIC Metro

We’ve now got 1 metre contours on the Archistar map for NSW & VIC metro areas. Expect to see more layers like this on the platform as more data sets become available!

Data Visualisation – National Electricity Transmission Lines

Some of our users are involved in building types that need to take the location of transmission lines into account. This is another agile answer to a very specific request we received. You can now view national electricity transmission lines on the Archistar map. Look out for more new layers soon!

Design Generator AI – Design by Compliance Code

This is an extremely important improvement that will eventually evolve Archistar from a concept generating engine into a recommendations engine. Skip the step of entering in parameters and just let the generator do its thing, taking into account all the restrictions imposed by the Low Rise Housing Diversity Code in NSW.

Design Generator AI – Underground Parking for Townhouses

This is another specific request that had to be solved in order to provide realistic solutions to users. As you can see in the testing document, we have developed design strategies that are truer to life and have provisions for underground parking as well as space for the ramp that leads into the area.

Filtering through Saved Sites & History

A growing number of clients have a large number of saved sites. We’ve implemented key filters for users to help them find the exact site they want. Pick up where you left off and work faster!

Partner Integration – Export Lists from Partners

Available on the Domain, Commercial Real Estate and BCI Australia addons, you are now able to filter through their rich listings and export the results into an excel file. Use this valuable data to create new business opportunities!

Partner Integration – BCI Australia

We now have another great partner on the Archistar platform. BCI Australia provides project and DA information so you can get the most comprehensive understanding of the market possible. Learn what developments are approved and rejected in your focus area.

Partner Integration – Domain Advanced

Thanks to our partner Domain Group, we now have sales history, land valuation, owner details, property photos and more against our sites. This important data lives alongside all other data sets meaning it’s one less click to get your important research done.

Full Platform Refactor – Archistar 3.0

Our clients need to know absolutely everything about a site. The only way we are going to deliver is to create a scalable back-end and a reimagined user experience. Enter Archistar 3.0, built to accommodate hundreds of APIs feeding in simultaneously. We know that we can’t dump this complexity onto our customers so we’ve drastically improved the UI and UX to simplify this growing platform.

Design Generator AI – Advanced Mixed Use Logic

Our Mixed-Use Generator can now generate design solutions that precisely respond to users’ desired GFA for retail and commercial. More than that, it can automatically place retail areas close to street front to provide reasonable design solutions.

Design Generator AI – Three Storey Townhouses

This was a very specific request from a number of our clients. They knew exactly what they needed and we immediately created new algorithms to solve the problem. We can now create three storey townhouses that are connected/free standing and then dedicate the first floor to parking.

Planning Rules – Choose Compliance Codes

As of July 1, 2020, the Low Rise Housing Diversity Code was pushed out across all NSW Local Government Authorities. We have sourced all the CDC rules and have put them into the platform. Select any site in NSW and you can toggle between the regular LEP requirements and the new CDC requirements.

Planning Rules – Categorised by Regulation Level

Every one of our sites has government planning rules applied against it. We now show these rules in user friendly categories so you can tell which set of rules takes priority. We go down to the LEP and LGA level and provide hyperlinks to the exact government document(s) that are enforced on your chosen site.

Fourth Generation Design AI – Faster & Smarter

We have completely overhauled our AI infrastructure and which means we can process more simultaneous scenarios than ever before and at a much faster speed. This is an extremely important foundational piece that takes us from a ‘startup tool’ to an enterprise-grade platform that can process a massive volume of design jobs.

Design Generator AI – Extra Large Commercial Designs

Larger sites means more complex algorithms. We have tested and released another version of the Commercial generator that allows for building generation up to 50,000m2. Go big!

Design Generator AI – Townhouse Open Land & Connected Dwellings

Thanks to further user feedback we have now implemented the ability to set a percentage of open land and also determine how many dwellings are connected. Another step in the right direction for full precinct generation…

Design Generator AI – Townhouse Detailed Inputs for Road and Sidewalks

Yet another improvement to our townhouse generator; you can now set exactly how wide your road and sidewalks are. Sidewalks are an extra feature we’ve released that helps to breathe life and context into your designs.

Design Generator AI – Adaptive Townhouse Designs

Our new townhouse massing generator is a huge step towards the automated creation of fully realised 3D houses. Visually striking townhouse designs with logic for room layouts are now created by the generator meaning that no two scenarios are ever the same.

Design Generator AI – Duplex Generator

We have now carved out a specific interface for duplex generation. This generator also takes advantage of our adaptive townhouse massing code and can create massings that have logical layouts based on GFA. In the image you can see that there are clear spaces for an entrance and garage for the two dwellings.

Design Generator AI – Hotel Generator

In minutes, we can now generate hundreds of hotel designs with customised hotel room mix. This is one of many niche requests we receive and is a testament to the flexibility and scalability of our Generator AI.

Database 2.0 – Australia’s Best Zoning Database

This is a huge project that spanned half a year. With our new custom database we are updating zoning and planning rules weekly. This means that Archistar now has Australia’s most comprehensive national zoning database. Want to bring this data into your platform? Enquire about our APIs.

Instant AI Analysis – House Sunlight & Ground Shadows

We have extended our analysis engine to run on smaller buildings such as townhouses and duplexes. You can now check if your townhouses are getting enough sunlight or if they are casting shadows on neighbouring buildings.

Advanced Measurement Tool

To help with the growing amount of people working from home, we created a measuring tool in the space of two days. You can use this feature to measure custom areas, perimeters, distance from boundaries, and much more.

Report Customisation – Change 3D View

Our ultra-fast, knowledge packed Development Due Diligence report now allows you to edit the building view while you’re customising the report! Show off the perfect angle in your professional, white-labelled report.

Design Generator AI – Townhouse Improvements

In under a month, we have iterated multiple times on our townhouse design generator AI. This is due to the unmatched talent and speed of our generative design team. Every iteration results in more organic, realistic townhouse design strategies.

Design Generator AI – Commercial Buildings L/XL

Multi-tower, custom podium Commercial buildings can now be generated on the Archistar platform. We have made massive strides on our AI engine. A number of breakthrough improvements we’ve made while developing our Commercial AI will be rolled out to our Residential AI in the near future.

Design Generator AI – Townhouse Slicer

We have improved our ‘slicer’ which is the code that subdivides geometry into suitable units/lots/subdivisions, etc. Driven by Adriel Saguinsin in the generative design team, this improvement will let you create beautiful parametric townhouse designs that maximise land usage.

Instant Intel – Development Due Diligence Report

In a single click, extract everything a property professional needs to know about a site. Known as the Development Due Diligence Report (or DDD Report), we have allowed users to extract planning details, risk factors, potential design strategies and market activity into a beautiful, customisable report. It is a Comparative Market Analysis on steroids for Real Estate Agents and a powerful Due Diligence report for Property Developers.

Trustworthy Data – Western Australia & South Australia Data Refactor

In preparation for the implementation of our refactored database structure developed by Head of Data Sandra Chan, we have completely updated the zoning and planning data for WA and SA. This is a very exciting development that paves the way for an exponential improvement in update frequency.

Design Generator AI – Car Parks

Our first version of the car park generator is now live on the platform. You can generate hundreds of buildings – now see what car park layouts are possible that align to your building core and elevator shafts. Future versions of the car park generator will present you with multiple options much like our building generator.

Design Generator AI – Commercial Designs

Commercial buildings are now available to be created in our Design Generator. You can also set variable site and tower offsets! This launch version works on sites with lot areas <2000m2. Stay tuned for further improvements to the Commercial generator.