eCAD System Design - Applications in Architecture

The rapid advances in learning technologies, computer modeling, multimedia and spatial sciences, as well as the availability of many powerful graphics PCs and workstations, make 3-D modeling-based methods for personalized e-learning with eCAD (modeling) functionality feasible. Personalized eCAD learning is a new term in engineering, environment and architecture education, related to the development of learning educational units (3-D learning objects) with re-usable digital architecture functionality, and introduced to literature for the first time within this paper. In particular, for university education courses in eCAD, digital architecture, design computing and CAAD (reagarding spatial information systems, architectures, monuments, cultural heritage sites, etc.), such a e-learning methodolgy must be able to derive spatial, pictorial, geometric, spatial, topological, learning and semantic information from the target object (a 3-D model) or scene (a 3-D landscape environment) or procedure (a 3-D simulation approach to a phenomenon), in such a way that it can be directly used for e-learning purposes regarding the spatial topology, the history, the architecture, the structure and the temporal (time-based) 3-D geometry of the projected object, scene or procedure. This paper is about the system design of such a e-learning method. For this purpose, the requirements, objectives and pedagogical extensions are presented and discussed. Finaly, a practical project is used to demonstrate the functionality and the performance of the proposed methodology in architecture.