A Representation for Conceptual Design of Buildings

The building representation for storing design solutions adopted in SEED-Config consists of two levels of abstraction models defined on top of the object-oriented data model. The first level is an information model, called the building entity and technology model, which stores design data as they are generated during conceptual design, supports case-based reasoning, and shares data among all design participants. This model represents each building entity as a generic container that encompasses its properties, taxonomy, geometry, composition, relationships, and design knowledge applied in generating it. The second level is a conceptual model that defines the types of objects, relationships, and data needed to fully represent the information in a given design domain. The conceptual model specifies the semantics of the design information for the domain using the syntax defined in the information model. The proposed representation also includes a faceted classification scheme to define the controlled vocabulary from which indexes are obtained. The representation has the following advantages: It integrates multiple views, supports design evolution, supports design exploration, and is extensible.