Interactive Design Coordination for the Building Industry

Abstract

The problem of effective communication in the process of building design and construction is widely recognized. The involvement of several design disciplines combined with the tendency for designers to work in distinct offices results in little capacity for them to investigate the influence of their design decisions on other design areas. One of the responses to the need for effective Interaction in the use of computers for design project is the supersytem concept proposed for ICES, the Integrated Civil Engineering System. The supersystem is defined as the cooperative effort on the part of the designers of several problem oriented computer capabilities to implement project capabilities by allowing each of their problem oriented subsystem to reference a single file of project data. The supersystem would allow design interaction by having each of the problem oriented computer subsystem reference a single file of information specifying the project. Future work in the application of computers to interactive and project oriented design in the building industry will have to concentrate on the file structure to be used in the Implementation of a computer building design supersystem.