Development of an object library for a design support system

Abstract

This thesis describes the development of an object library for a design support system presently being developed by the Fine Tools Group of the Architecture faculty. The object library is conceived as a library of “types” based on the premise that a major part of design solution is accomplished by reference to prior solutions. It contains graphical representations of physical objects that make up a building, wherein each object representation possesses the capability of being depicted as a building component or as a building product. The proposed object library is organized by a typology. The usage of terms in the typology, in turn, is controlled by a thesaurus which reflects an ordering of terms used to form object descriptors and contains classifiers derived from the CSI and CI/SfB classification systems.