Gregory J. Smith

Multidisciplinary design in virtual worlds

Large design projects, such as those in the AEC domain, involve collaboration among a number of design disciplines, often in separate locations. With the increase in CAD usage in design offices, there has been an increase in the interest in collaboration using the electronic medium, both synchronously and asynchronously. The use of a single shared database representing a single model of a building has been widely put forward but this paper argues that this does not take into account the different representations required by each discipline. This paper puts forward an environment which provides real-time multi-user collaboration in a 3D virtual world for designers in different locations. Agent technology is used to manage the different views, creation and modifications of objects in the 3D virtual world and the necessary relationships with the database(s) belonging to each discipline.

Context and design agents

Informal notions of context often imply much more than that captured in many computational formalisms of it. The view presented in this paper, built on our understanding of designing, is of context being larger than any one agents representation of it. This paper describes how for an agents reasoning about context it is the current situation that determines what the agents interpretations of context are, not the reverse. The paper presents a typical scenario involving collaborating, sketching designers.

Towards Designing in Adaptive Virtual Worlds

AbstractWe present an approach to designing from within a virtual world in which the objects in the world have agency. In this kind of world, agents are associated with design components rather than specific design processes. By combining adaptive virtual worlds with situated FBS, we have a different kind of design support, illustrated through scenarios of building design. his document outlines the necessary details to prepare a conference paper for the annual CAD conferences. Authors are requested to follow all formatting instructions encoded into this MS Word file. To simplify the task of paper preparation, simply cut and paste the relevant sections into this document.

Describing Situated Design Agents

Situated design agents are agents built using concepts from situated cognition. As situated design agents are constructive and interactive, we desire a formalism that starts with interaction and works backwards to what representations of structure, behaviour and function such interaction requires. This paper begins the process of providing a formal underpinning to agency that better corresponds to existing informal descriptions of designing as interactive, situated reflection.