Peng Wang using PedSim in a museum lobby simulation during the webinar.
On September 10, the KPF Architectural Designer gave a presentation on the Rhino and Grasshopper plugin he designed and developed, PedSim, in an event hosted by the Rhino creators, McNeel Europe.
Peng Wang created PedSim as a pedestrian simulation to allow people to move from a start point to an end point, taking the best route while avoiding obstacles and other people. The plugin is best for scenarios with heavy pedestrian traffic, such as outdoor shopping environments or indoor museum exhibitions. PedSim is a free plugin and has been available since 2017, with over 8,000 downloads.
Peng developed PedSim in his spare time, as a passion project. He states he drew “inspiration for PedSim from my trip to Tokyo for the KPF Paul Katz Fellowship in 2016. I was studying pedestrian flow in the vibrant retail spaces in Shinjuku Station. After I finished the work for the fellowship, I decided to make a tool that could help designers and researchers study pedestrian flow.”
The webinar, led by Peng, guides the viewer through a demonstration of functions, basic modeling processes, agent behavior, and route-finding algorithms, with examples and case studies. It also includes background on PedSim and a comparison to the recently released PedSim Pro plugin, which is available through purchase.
Watch the full webinar on Youtube here.