FPDX: a knowledge-based system for architectural floor plan design

This paper describes a Floor Plan Design Expert System (FPDX), a knowledge-based CAD tool, that assists architects in checking their residential building floor plans against government building codes by model-based reasoning. FPDX automatically translates a graphical floor plan design into a frame-based representation in Prolog which contains all descriptions of the drawing objects including their inter-relationships. The plan is then evaluated against the government building regulations which are represented as rules. If there is any violation of regulations, suggestion for modification will be provided by the system. Concepts are illustrated by examples throughout the paper