56.03 Methoden im Bauingenieurwesen
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Although there are some good reasons to design engineering software as a stand-alone application for a single computer, there are also numerous possibilities for creating distributed engineering applications, in particular using the Internet. This paper presents some typical scenarios how engineering applications can benefit from including network capabilities. Also, some examples of Internet-based engineering applications are discussed to show how the concepts presented can be implemented.
Collaboration in AEC Design : Web-enabling Applications using Peer-to-Peer Office Communicator
(2004)
A market analysis conducted by Gartner Dataquest in August 2001 has shown the typical characteristics of the AEC design process. High volatility in membership of AEC design groups and members dispersed over several external offices is the common collaboration scenario. Membership is most times short lived, compared to the overall duration of the process. A technical solution has to take that into account by making joining and leaving a collaborative work group very easy. The modelling of roles of collaboration between group members must be based on a commonly understood principle like the publisher / subscriber model, where the individual that is responsible for the distribution of vital information is clear. Security issues and trust in the confidentiality of the system is a central concern for the acceptance of the system. Therefore, keeping the subset of data that will be published under the absolute control of the publisher is a must. This is not the case with server-based scenarios, sometimes even due to psychological reasons. A loosely bound Peer-to-Peer network offers advantages over a server-based solution, because of less administrative overhead and simple installation procedures. In a peer-to-peer environment, a publish/subscribe role model can be more easily implemented. The publish/subscribe model matches the way AEC processes are modelled in real world scenarios today, where legal proof of information exchange between external offices is of high importance. Workflow management systems for small to midsize companies of the AEC industry may adopt the peer-to-peer approach to collaboration in the future. Further investigations are being made on the research level (WINDS) by integrating the viewer and redlining application Collaborate! into a collaborative environment.
Current building product models explicitly represent components, attributes of components, and relationships between components. These designer-focused product models, however, do not represent many of the design conditions that are important for construction, such as component similarity, uniformity, and penetrations. Current design and construction tools offer limited support for detecting these construction-specific design conditions. This paper describes the ontology we developed using the manufacturing concept of features to represent the design conditions that are important for construction. The feature ontology provides the blueprint for the additions and changes needed to transform a standard product model into a constructionspecific product model. The ontology formalizes three classes of features, defines the attributes and functions of each feature type, and represents the relationships between features explicitly. The descriptive semantics of the ontology allows practitioners to represent their varied preferences for naming features, specifying features that result from component intersections and the similarity of components, and grouping features that affect a specific construction domain. A software prototype that implements the ontology enables practitioners to transform designer-focused product models into feature-based product models that represent the construction perspective.
Structural engineering projects are increasingly organized in networked cooperations due to a permanently enlarged competition pressure and a high degree of complexity while performing the concurrent design activities. Software that intends to support such collaborative structural design processes implicates enormous requirements. In the course of our common research work, we analyzed the pros and cons of the application of both the peer-to-peer (University of Bonn) and multiagent architecture style (University of Bochum) within the field of collaborative structural design. In this paper, we join the benefits of both architecture styles in an integrated conceptual approach. We demonstrate the surplus value of the integrated multiagent–peer-to-peer approach by means of an example scenario in which several structural engineers are co-operatively designing the basic structural elements of an arched bridge, applying heterogeneous CAD systems.
The scientific transfer of key technology features to developing countries, together with adequate competence, localisation and adaptation, is the primary purpose of the proposed investigation. It is evident that introducing high-level CAD design and detailing will improve the planning process in developing countries. Successful utilization of applied information technology for the planning process, however, depends on the user-interface of individual software. Therefore, to open the great opportunity embedded in CAD software for clients globally, the language and character-set barrier of traditional user-interfaces must be overcome. A proposal for a research program is given here to address such issue in favour of global civil engineering.
Assuring global consistency in a cooperative working environment is the main focus of many nowaday research projects in the field of civil engineering and others. In this paper, a new approach based on octrees will be discussed. It will be shown that by the usage of octrees not only the management and control of processes in a network-based working environment can be optimised but also an efficient integration platform for processes from various disciplines – such as architecture and civil engineering – can be provided. By means of an octree-based collision detection resp. consistency assurance a client-server-architecture will be described as well as sophisticated information services for a further support of cooperative work.
Communication software and distributed applications for control and building performance simulation software must be reliable, efficient, flexible, and reusable. This paper reports on progress of a project, which aims to achieve better integrated building and systems control modeling in building performance simulation by run-time coupling of distributed computer programs. These requirements motivate the use of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), which offers sufficient advantage than communication within simple abstraction. However, set up highly available applications with CORBA is hard. Neither control modeling software nor building performance environments have simple interface with CORBA objects. Therefore, this paper describes an architectural solution to distributed control and building performance software tools with CORBA objects. Then, it explains how much the developement of CORBA based distributed building control simulation applications is difficult. The paper finishes by giving some recommendations.
This paper describes an approach to support co-operation of experts in heterogeneous geotechnical engineering project environments during both regular execution and handling of exceptional situations. A co-operation platform is introduced which is based on a generalized information model mapping key information about the construction project, the construction process as well as the organization structure. Several tools are provided to operate the information model in a network based environment.
In this contribution, the design of an analysis environment is presented, that supports an analyst to come to a decision within a gradual collaborative planning process. An analyst represents a project manager, planner or any other person, involved in the planning process. Today, planning processes are managed by several geographically distributed planners and project managers. Thus, complexity of such a process rises even more. Prediction of consequences of many planning decisions is not possible, in particular since assessment of a planning advance is not trivial. There have to be considered several viewpoints, that depend on individual perceptions. In the following, methods are presented to realize planning decision support.