de B Bauke Vries

DDDoolz: designing with modular masses

Abstract 3D modelling in the inception phase of architectural design is typically not supported in CAD. Moreover 3D modelling is still far from intuitive with the common interface techniques. This paper introduces a 3D modelling tool for architects, named DDDoolz, which is limited in its purposes but yet very powerful in its use. A cube is the basic drawing element to construct arrays representing building masses. Modification of the design is achieved by dragging sets of cubes, resulting in the creation or deletion of new cubes. Building upon the grid structure of DDDoolz, a design methodology has been developed. To analyse its strengths and weaknesses, DDDoolz is compared with traditional scale modelling.

Message exchange in the building industry

A process model is described for exchanging information in the building industry. In this model participants send and receive messages. On receipt of a message an activity is executed if all required information is available. Otherwise a message will be sent to another participant to obtain the missing information. After execution of an activity a reply is sent with the desired data. In a building project an agreement is defined with all activities that will be executed by each of the participants. An executable implementation of the process model is built in ExSpect. In ExSpect the message exchange process can be simulated and analyzed for a specific building project.

Landscape generator: Method to generate landscape configurations for spatial plan-making

Current spatial planning tools focus mainly on land use evaluation and not on spatial plan design. Automated generation of spatial design intends to bridge the gap between graphical design and geographical information systems. We propose a new method that generates spatial plans with a high level of detail and realism. A simple set of rules is derived by the modeler from a landscape type that serves as a reference. These rules are implemented by spatial functions with a landscape type specific objective. In a multi-objective optimization algorithm a landscape plan is generated for a specific lot that meets the objectives. The modeler controls the plan generation process through an objective task list which determines the priority of the objectives. Examples show that the landscape generator is capable of generating plausible spatial plans in reasonable computing time. More specifically, they show that the landscape generator performs best with low configurationally structured reference projects and performs less with high configurationally structured reference projects. The manual construction of the objective task list could be further improved by pre-structured objectives dependent on landscape designer’s preference.

Implementations Scenarios for 4D CAD in Practice

The application of 3D and 4D CAD software is considered to be able to offer possibilities for more consistent project documentation and visualisation, which should eventually enable fail cost reduction. 4D software is seen as a tool for project organisers and project team members to better communicate and analyse schedule information.. In this paper experiences with 4D CAD software in construction projects are discussed. Analyses of these experiences and additional user experiments have lead to a short-term and a long-term implementation strategy in practice

Freedom through constraints: User-oriented architectural design

In this article we report on validated research for the construction of design constraints by automated interpretation of natural language input. We show how our approach of dynamic reconfigurations of parsed syntax trees using a number of production rules is used to formalize and transform natural language constructs into computable constraints that are applied to concrete building information models. The calibration and validation of the proposed algorithms and production rules is based on two test data sets: The verbatim text of Dutch building code regulations for dormer extensions on existing roofs and constraints formulated ad hoc by design students based upon a series of example designs. We show how a prototypical implementation of our approach can be used to interpret 44% of the test data without human interference and how the remaining sentences can be interpreted with minimal additional effort or further development.

Energy saving renovation, analysis of critical factors at building level

To accelerate energy saving in the built environment, housing associations should apply low-energy techniques in existing houses which are in need of renovation. Because of a lack of knowledge it is difficult for housing associations to determine which low-energy technique has the best results for energy consumption and CO2-emissions. In this research a decision support tool will be developed with a new energy performance calculation method at district level including aspects like houses, transport and households. In this paper we focus on the critical factors at the building level that should be included in a district data model. Therefore we have executed a screening analysis to indicate what these critical factors are.

Model for Office Building Usage Simulation

This paper presents a model for office building usage simulation which is part of the research project “User Simulation of Space Utilisation”. The aim of this project is to develop a model for the simulation of human movement to predict space utilisation in office buildings.

A decision making model of the doorway clue for an agent’s evacuation simulation

In this research an agent-based simulation model AMUSE is being developed for the evacuation behaviour of humans induced by the architectural characteristics of the environment. From previous research the architectural characteristics are interpreted as a list of so-called architectural clue types, which are related to three groups of evacuation strategies with a different priority. The Doorway clue is taken as an example of all the clue types to be investigated. With it a basic research method is explained. With an initial six-variable decision making model, a set of virtual scenes were constructed and implemented in a Head-CAVE system, in which 102 subjects were tested as in an evacuation game. With the Binary Logistic Regression the utility function of the model is estimated indicating how these variables affect human choice on any pair of doorways in a scene. Finally, as a sub-model of AMUSE, the decision making model of the Doorway clues is setup, from which evidence was found that the distance from the decision point to the doorway is not always the most important factor as it is assumed in the other evacuation models.