Summary: |
An approach to the modeling of buildings is presented, focussing on theinvariables in the representation of the building as a complex object, composedof spaces, assemblies of building elements and materials. The general infor-mationarchitecture includes: functional and technical specification, the deter-mination of form and dimensions, determination of productstructure, cost andperformance estimation and the transformation of productstructure into buildingoperations.The emphasis is on the representation of the productstructure of buildings fromdifferent viewpoints and in different phases. Within the productstructure adistinction is made between spatial structure and "material structure", the waymaterials, components and assemblies are combined into the endproduct as a whole.This leads to a semantic network with various hierarchies of abstraction,allowing for an integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches in variousstages of the design process and a combination of generic and specific represen-tations of components, assemblies and productstructure.Related issues of datastructuring and -modeling and variational and combina-torial design are discussed on the basis of a prototypical appIication: anassembly consisting of doors and windows, their frames, wall openings, wall andloadbearing structure. The application involves a hybrid object-oriented DBMS,Tornado. |