Model of Design Parts and its Use to the Design Team

This paper discusses the impact of the choice of representation on the final result in design and construction projects. Representation is an integrated part of the design process used by architects as a communication tool to help them present a concept to their clients and other consultants. The representation choice, in addition, reflects the professionalis perception of the design process and the architectural artefact. Architectsi offices work with a wide range of problems - aesthetic and spatial issues, detailing, choice of materials, and systems design. The multiplicity of representations enriches the understanding of these issues. Today, the model-oriented approach in design is common among both architects and leading software producers for the construction industry. While STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Data) aims at developing very comprehensive product models, we examine the possibility of building up a small-scale model responding to the information needs of a design team. In our research work, we view a model of design parts as a suitable carrier of information allowing the designers to store data reflecting their accumulated and refined professional knowledge and experience. Besides, the team of architects can later easily retrieve information needed for future design reuse from the model. To reuse design solutions and learn from previous work is an essential part of the professional culture. The construction industry as a whole has been slow in implementing information technology to improve the work methods. Neither have architectsi offices used the full potential of this technology to structure information and rationalize the design process. The objective of this study is to examine whether information technology makes it possible to organize all the design information in an office archive. The proposed model of design parts relates to national standards and universal models for product data representation and exchange, such as STEP. Today, the construction sector is becoming increasingly aware of the potential of the model-oriented approach both to rationalize the design and construction process and offer designers new options to store, broaden and reuse professional knowledge. We have used the information modelling language EXPRESS to describe our concept