# Asahi Building-Wall
Asahi Building-Wall adopted CATIA on the **3D**EXPERIENCE platform, using parametric design to build reusable master templates of louvers and panels.
## Accelerating Architectural Ambition With Parametric Design
Ginza is one of Tokyo’s most iconic urban districts, known for its striking architectural landscape which includes the historic clock tower of Wako, the lattice-and-eaves façade of Ginza Six and the glass-block exterior of Maison Hermès.
So when Asahi Building-Wall, a Japanese façade engineering specialist, was asked to reimagine the exterior of an existing eight-story mixed-use building in the district, it knew it had to deliver something exceptional.
Asahi Building-Wall’s role is to bridge the gap between ambitious architectural concepts and what is actually technically feasible, which is an increasingly demanding challenge. “Our mission is to engage early in the project through a front-loading approach, collaborating with building owners and design firms to define requirements, analyze risks and propose solutions to address challenges early on,” said Yasuakira Iwasaki, Asahi Building-Wall’s Executive Officer and General Manager of the Proposal Division.
During these early stages, Asahi Building-Wall is often asked to assess whether unconventional materials, unique architectural cladding, or elaborate geometries can be used on a building’s exterior. The company then needs to consider everything from strength and weather resistance to cost, constructability and maintenance. “Indeed, such market needs appear to be expanding,” Iwasaki said. “Even with traditional materials, there is a trend toward parametric designs involving three-dimensional twists and curves.”
The Ginza project brought all of these demands together. To realize the architect’s distinctive façade design, Asahi Building-Wall needed to figure out how to engineer thousands of unique façade components as efficiently as possible. That’s why it chose to adopt CATIA on the [**3D**EXPERIENCE platform](/3dexperience-platform "The 3DEXPERIENCE platform"), using parametric design and templating to automate the process of generating detailed drawings for construction and manufacturing from complex 3D designs.
We realized we could leverage CATIA’s parametric design and templating features to automate the process of creating louvers and panels, each with a unique geometry.
**Hiroki Awaji**
Engineer, Asahi Building-Wall
## Thousands of Unique Components Create a Building Envelope Design
The building in Ginza presented several constraints typical of façade renovation projects, including space and weight limitations. But the architect’s planned design also introduced extra complexity. The curved exterior of the existing wall meant the distance to the road boundary varied across the building. The proposed building façade design took advantage of that geometry, with louvers gradually changing in size to create a stronger sense of depth. It was visually impressive, but design and production requirements were complex – and as Asahi Building-Wall began creating construction documentation, the scale of the engineering task became clear.
“Most factories still require us to convert 3D models into 2D product drawings before manufacturing can begin,” said Hiroki Awaji, Asahi Building-Wall’s engineer in charge of the project. “As we progressed with the Ginza project, we realized this conversion would require an enormous amount of work. No component was the same, so we would have had to manually draw thousands of slightly different louvers and panels – an extremely time-consuming and impractical task.”
The team needed a way to manage that variation without creating a completely new design for each component. “That’s when we thought of using [CATIA](/products/catia/3dexperience-catia "3DEXPERIENCE CATIA"),” Awaji said. “We originally adopted the **3D**EXPERIENCE platform a couple of years ago to conduct structural analysis and design studies simultaneously in a 3D environment. We realized we could leverage CATIA’s [parametric design](/store/cad/parametric-modeling "Understanding the power of parametric modeling") and templating features to automate the process of creating louvers and panels, each with a unique geometry.”
Automated, rule‑based workflows transform Asahi Building-Wall's design logic and architecture‑industry specifics into a unified system capable of handling thousands of variations without rebuilding each one.
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## Capturing Design Knowledge in Reusable Models
With help from Dassault Systèmes, Asahi Building-Wall was able to use CATIA on the **3D**EXPERIENCE platform as its architectural design software, helping it to create a parametric CAD model for the louver, known as the louver master, and another for the panel, the panel master. These were then combined into a unit master, creating a foundation from which different façade units could be generated.
Bringing that system to life was the responsibility of local Dassault Systèmes business partner Otsuka Corporation, which led the hands-on implementation at Asahi Building-Wall, drawing on its expertise in manufacturing-sector automation.
“We’ve built automated, rule-based workflows for manufacturing clients for years. And we’ve used this knowledge to translate Asahi Building-Wall's design logic and the specificities from the architecture industry into a single system that could handle thousands of variations without needing to rebuild each one,” said Youji Aoki, an appliction specialist in the product lifecycle management (PLM) solution sales department at Otsuka Corporation.
Otsuka used CATIA’s Enterprise Knowledge Language (EKL) to build the scripts and automated layout-generation process that determined how the louvers should be arranged across the building.
“We effectively established a set of rules – for example, which geometry and connection method should be used under specific conditions – and then created a process that could output the drawings as efficiently as possible,” Awaji said. “It meant we could automatically generate various models for louver and panel, with 3D models and 2D drawings fully linked. Other 3D CAD systems would require reprogramming for each project, which would be too time-consuming.”
To make parametric design accessible beyond CATIA users, the experts at Otsuka also built a spreadsheet-based interface so members of Asahi Building-Wall’s team could enter parameter values and update the model. This allowed the geometry to change without having to manually rebuild it in CATIA.
Previously, a change of this scale could easily take another week for our team to revise everything by hand… We completed the revisions in just two days.
**Hiroki Awaji**
Engineer, Asahi Building-Wall
## Creating 1,900 Drawings in Just Two Days
It was later on in the Ginza project that Asahi Building-Wall’s approach was put to the test. After several design changes, the company needed to recreate its 3D data and thousands of unique 2D drawings – a task that could have disrupted the project schedule.
“Design changes happen frequently on a fully customized façade like this, where there are often last-minute structural strength requirements or assembly constraints, such as insufficient clearance for tools,” Awaji said. “In the final stage of the Ginza project, we had to recreate all 3D data and about 1,900 2D drawings. Previously, a change of this scale could easily take another week for our team to revise everything by hand – a single person could probably manage about 100 drawings in a day. Thanks to CATIA’s templating features, the time and effort spent on this rework was significantly reduced. We completed the revisions in just two days – and with just a few button clicks.”
## Putting the Model to Work
The approach behind the Ginza project provides Asahi Building-Wall with a replicable way to improve the efficiency of its engineering process and to respond to more projects without adding additional manual work. This matters at a time when Japan’s construction industry is facing growing resource constraints, putting pressure on companies to deliver increasingly complex projects with limited engineering capacity.
“Architecture is characterized by one-off production and high-mix, low-volume production, which makes it difficult to achieve efficiency,” Awaji said. “Ideally, we want to reach a point where the cost of designing a customized product is comparable to producing the same product in large volumes. In other words, our goal is to achieve a state of mass customization, both in design and manufacturing.”
Asahi Building-Wall is already advancing towards this vision by using digital engineering across more of its façade workflow. For example, it has adopted Dassault Systèmes’ [SIMULIA](/products/simulia "SIMULIA") for [structural simulation](/products/simulia/structural-simulation "Structural Simulation") on some of its projects, including the analysis of reinforcement for curved concrete structures. Because the structural model remains associative with the CATIA parametric design, a change carries straight through to the updated simulation results without the need to remodel the structure.
“When a design change occurs, we can simply update the parametric model and immediately generate updated structural analysis results. I believe this has significant value in terms of achieving mass customization in design,” Awaji said.
Design, manufacturing and construction is connected through the **3D**EXPERIENCE platform, with immense potential.
**Yasuakira Iwasaki**
Executive Officer and General Manager of the Proposal Division, Asahi Building-Wall
## Making Future Façade Projects More Manageable
The company also wants to extend the digital workflow beyond its own teams. By sharing a detailed model with architectural firms and general contractors, it can help teams coordinate from the earliest stage of a project. “Sharing a 3D model with external stakeholders could help eliminate discrepancies and improve communication,” Awaji said.
There’s also potential for Dassault Systèmes solutions to improve efficiencies at the manufacturing stage, not only improving collaboration by having stakeholders access the same data, but also ensuring right-first-time construction. Asahi Building-Wall is exploring how virtual reality could let it walk through construction sequences in advance – testing how components would be brought into position and fastened together on site, for example, before work begins.
For Iwasaki, Dassault Systèmes technologies have opened up multiple opportunities. “From the Ginza project, I realized that CATIA is more than just a 3D CAD tool. Design, manufacturing and construction is [connected through the **3D**EXPERIENCE platform](/3dexperience-platform/one-unified-environment "One Unified Environment"), with immense potential,” he said. “Particularly for fully customized façades, where frequent design changes occur, managing design information centrally and seamlessly extending it to manufacturing drawings could revolutionize our workflow and help us with our key priority – to turn our customers’ ambitious designs into reality.”
## FAQs
## What was Asahi Building-Wall’s challenge in the Ginza façade project?
Asahi Building-Wall needed to engineer thousands of unique louvers and panels for an eight-story mixed-use building without manually creating every 3D model and 2D drawing.
## Which Dassault Systèmes solution did Asahi Building-Wall implement?
Asahi Building-Wall implemented CATIA on the **3D**EXPERIENCE platform, using parametric templates for louvers, panels and façade units.
## What measurable results did Asahi Building-Wall achieve with CATIA?
The company regenerated as many as 1,900 3D models and 2D drawings in just two days, compared with a revision process that could have taken another week.
## How did Asahi Building-Wall implement parametric design?
Local implementation partner Otsuka Corporation created louver, panel and unit masters, automated rule-based workflows with CATIA Enterprise Knowledge Language and added a spreadsheet interface for parameter updates.
## Which industries can benefit from the parametric design approach?
Architecture, façade engineering and construction teams can apply the approach to customized, high-mix low-volume projects that require frequent design changes and detailed manufacturing drawings.
## What is parametric architecture?
Parametric architecture uses parameters, rules and relationships to define and adapt architectural designs. By changing inputs such as dimensions or geometry, designers can generate and update multiple design variations without recreating each model manually. Asahi Building-Wall applies this approach to façade engineering, using CATIA’s parametric design and templating capabilities to create and manage highly customized louvers, panels and façade units.
## Focus on Asahi Building-Wall
Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Tokyo, Asahi Building-Wall helps develop unique and challenging building façades that typically require a high level of engineering. The company uses advanced materials including glass fiber reinforced concrete (GRC), glass fiber-reinforced gypsum (GRG), fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) as well as glass, metal and stone. It has contributed to some of Japan’s most recognizable landmark buildings, including the Louis Vuitton Osaka Midosuji store, Azabudai Hills, Shiseido Ginza Building and Tokyu Plaza Harajuku “Harakado.”
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## Focus on Otsuka Corporation
Otsuka Corporation is a Japan-based Dassault Systèmes implementation partner, bringing a wealth of experience from manufacturing industries where automated, batch-driven production workflows are well established. Since its founding, Otsuka Corporation has consistently supported customers in their digital transformation and operational efficiency efforts. It provides one-stop solutions and support.
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