An information exchange protocol for constructed facilities

The principal motivation of this study is to provide an open architecture for the exchange of information among the many participants in the planning, design, construction, and management of constructed facilities. Since the participants are dispersed both geographically and organizationally, and are likely to use various computer systems and languages, the exchange protocol must be designed to be accessible to all. This document presents the preliminary findings of this research in the specific area of spatial decomposition and modeling of facilities. Conceptual models for representation of spaces and their organizations are discussed and two prototype programs, based on the non-manifold geometric modeling system NOODLES, are described. It is expected that non-geometric attributes can be readily augmented to the spatial representation during the remaining part of this work.