Architectural plan

Abstract: As the design of software architectures emerges as a discipline within software engineering, it will become increasingly important to support architectural description and analysis with tools and environments. In this paper we describe a system for developing architectural design environments that exploit architectural styles to guide software architects in producing specific systems. The primary contributions of this research are: (a) a generic object model for representing architectural designs; (b) the characterization of architectural styles as specializations of this object model; and (c) a toolkit for creating an open architectural design environment from a description of a specific architectural style. We use our experience in implementing these concepts to illustrate how style-oriented architectural design raises new challenges for software support environments.

Abstract: The key question arising in this paper, is how our currently ubiquitous and pervasive information and communication technologies (ICT) has throughout the years managed architectural design information and how has that affected architectural design, in which building geometry has mainly been studied. The evolution of computer-aided design (CAD) is used as the "backbone" for the assumptions made. The focus area of this paper is CAD and more widely digital ICT within the architecture, engineering and construction field (AEC), its development and available computer-aided design tools throughout the last 30 - 40 years. Architectural design is discussed in this paper from the viewpoint of complex design and construction projects and therefore the more complex information structures used in contemporary design and construction. Complexity has also resulted in a more complex, curved and "free" architectural building geometry, which has been enabled by modern CAD-tools. The main conclusion is, that information and communication technology has indeed enabled us to manage more complex building projects better and more comprehensively than earlier, and also more complex architectural expression can therefore be used in contemporary construction. Building product modelling (building information modelling, BIM) has been proposed to be a suitable method to manage all design and construction issues within current IT-oriented building projects and process environments. Product modelling is seen as a natural step in the evolution of ICT. Building product modelling is regarded in this paper to be a promising method to increase our ability to manage some more vague building and design criteria, such as design richness or even overall building quality. This paper is related to the authors' post-graduate studies on architectural design, environment changes and building product modelling in Helsinki University of Technology.

Abstract: Automatically generating 3D building models from 2D architectural drawings has many useful applications in the architecture engineering and construction community. This survey of model generation from paper and CAD-based architectural drawings covers the common pipeline and compares various algorithms for each step of the process.

Abstract: This book is intended to provide a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of computer-aided architectural design for the students of architecture, the architect in practice, and the computer professional who is interested in learning about this application area