Interactive Distributed Knowledge Support for Conceptual Building Design

In our project, we develop new tools for the conceptual design phase. During conceptual design, the coarse functionality and organization of a building is more important than a detailed worked out construction. We identify two roles, first the knowledge engineer who is responsible for knowledge definition and maintenance; second the architect who elaborates the conceptual design. The tool for the knowledge engineer is based on graph technology, it is specified using PROGRES and the UPGRADE framework. The tools for the architect are integrated to the industrial CAD tool ArchiCAD. Consistency between knowledge and conceptual design is ensured by the constraint checker, another extension to ArchiCAD