S-sequence: a new floorplan representation method preserving room abutment relationships

In this paper, we propose Segment-State Sequence (S-sequence), a new encoding method of floorplans with different abutment relationships between rooms. The proposed method provides necessary and sufficient conditions to abut two modules facing to the same segment partitioning a floorplan, and an abutment judgment which checks whether pairs of modules abut on the floorplan or not by using S-sequence. Since our algorithm checks abutment relationships of the rooms before decoding, we need not decode an S-sequence which does not meet abutment constraints in a Simulated Annealing process. Consequently, we can optimize floorplans satisfying abutment constraints rapidly. In experiments, we implemented the floorplan optimization algorithm with S-sequence and the abutment judgment method, and the results show that the proposed algorithm optimized floorplan satisfies abutment constraints rapidly.