The development of an intelligent system for visual simulation of construction projects

An intelligent tool which facilitates the formulation, generation, verification, validation and near-reality four dimensional (4D) simulation of construction plans and schedules offers the opportunity to enhance the quality of planners' decisions during planning and scheduling. Interfacing a graphical representation of building products (designs) and process-level visual simulation with an intelligent and automated processing unit provides a tool which supports planning and scheduling tasks. This work developed such a tool called VR PLANNER (Virtual Reality PLANNER). VR PLANNER comprises four sections namely PROVISYS (a VR module), AUTOPLAN (a knowledge-based module), a project management (PM) tool and Database Management System (DBMS) sections. The user models the proposed building using PROVISYS. Specific data and information attached to parts of the proposed building are transferred to AUTOPLAN to generate process information, attach graphical images to activities and transfer schedule data into the PM tool for inspection and validation. The refined schedule data are transferred back into AUTOPLAN. Schedule and visualisation data are transferred into PROVISYS from AUTOPLAN and attached to the parts of the proposed building. During simulation, VR PLANNER makes use of composite process images to project near-reality images of the construction process at the activity level. A prototype of this system is developed using SuperscapeTM VR Toolkit as the VR system, Kappa-PCTM as the knowledge-based application development system and Primavera Project PlannerTM (P3) as the PM tool. This research shows among other things that using a library-based strategy, proposed buildings can be graphically modelled for planning and scheduling purposes, the linkage of construction activities to their graphical images can be automated and construction processes can be visualised as far as the activity level.