An investigation of methods of using computers for processing and storing architectural designs

The topic of this thesis is computer-aided design, with particular reference to graphical techniques for the description of buildings. The thesis is in ten parts. Parts 1 and 2 survey current architectural design practice and relevant achievements in computer-aided design. They show a need for further work in graphical techniques for architectural design. The rest of the thesis is devoted to work done by the candidate in this field. Much of this work has already been described in published papers, which are included as Parts 6 to 10 of this thesis's Part 6 describes the experimental program NIBS, written as an exercise in the use of a display for designing industrialised buildings. From this work it became clear that a more powerful technique was needed for writing interactive display programs, and this led to the development of the programming method described in Part 7. The control sequence of the program is defined as a state-diagram, using a Network Definition Language, and the program is controlled by a syntax-analysing Reaction Handler. Parts 6 and 9 describe the data structures used by the Reaction Handler, and the definition languages. Part 10 describes the Light Handle, a graphical technique developed with the aid of the Reaction Handler. Parts 3, 4 and 5 form a discussion of this work. Part 5 also describes some other graphical techniques suitable for computer-aided architectural design. Additional details of the design of the NIBS program and the Reaction Handler are given in Appendices 3 and 2.