Efficient 3D building model generation from 2D floor plans

Abstract

3D building models are beneficial to architects, interior designers, and ordinary people in visualizing indoor space in three dimensions. 3D building models appear to be more aesthetic to ordinary people than architectural drawings. Architects can benefit from such models in detecting any inconsistencies in their designs. This thesis describes the design and implementation of an efficient 3D building model generator (3dGen) that can automatically create 3D building models from AutoCAD drawings. This thesis explains how 3dGen takes floor plan data in XML format (generated from AutoCAD drawings), extrudes the walls and vertical surfaces and adds additional 3D information to the existing floor plan. In doing so 3dGen aims to satisfy the complete watertight space and the manifold properties and attempts to minimize the amount of 3D data by eliminating redundant geometric primitives. This thesis explains the algorithms that were employed in order to generate correct surfaces with many types of portals in them and algorithms that detect inconsistencies in the 2D architectural drawings.