Automation in Building Design with Spatial Information

While current CAD (Computer-Aided Design) systems provide a variety of data representation schemes (e.g. wire-frames, surface, and solid modeling) and data exchange protocols, they fail to address automation issues in retrieval of building information to be used in different AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) applications. In these CAD systems, topological information (also known as spatial relations) describing the threedimensional spatial relationships between building components is conventionally represented in a manual fashion into data models. The manual data representation, however, inherently is a complex and challenging task due to the wide variety of spatial relationships. This paper outlines a computer-based building design framework with emphasis on the engine capable of automatically deducing topological information of building components, which support various aspects in building design such as constructability analysis, construction planning, and building code compliance checking.