Communicating design representations: the role of interpretation

The development of integrated computer systems in the fields of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) requires a viable scheme for data exchange between professional groups. Data exchange capability has two essential components: representation standards and feature extraction. A representation standard is an agreement among AEC professions about a common problem description language. Feature extraction is a process by which a particular professional entity derives a domain specific representation i.e. an interpretation, from a common representation. The roles of standards and feature extraction can be understood in terms of their relation to the overall problem-solving structure. This article presents a communication architecture for integrating AEC design data based on the principle of local interpretation of a low-level graphic exchange language. A prototype implementation is described