Agents, applications, and interactions in collaborative building design

Over the past decade a new generation of design tools has emerged which has, for instance, the potential to simulate any building as an integrated environmental and energy system. While powerful at their core, these computer models suffer from several user interface limitations. The starting point of this thesis is to attempt to solve these problems by developing an Intelligent Front End (IFE) for building performance appraisal in general and an Energy Simulation Program (ESP) in particular. The limitations are highlighted, a solution in the shape of an IFE architecture is described, and a knowledge based user conceptualisation model is installed and explained. The complexity of design means that most buildings are designed by teams rather by individuals. Each specialist team member typically makes use of a software tool appropriate to their particular needs. This approach raises considerable problems in the sharing of information between the team members from different organisations working together over a network, supported by design software tools. The second part of this thesis attempts to support this approach by extending the principles of the IFE to support collaborative design. The critical issues in managing and sharing information across design organisations are: the forming of data structure and query mechanisms for accessing information in a user friendly and transparent fashion; developing an environment that promotes information sharing that is unobtrusive to the designer. The goal here is to develop the infrastructure accompanied by software tools inter-operability that bypasses individual disciplines.