THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Lately, the built environment has been witnessing a lot of hazards ranging from collapsed buildings and bridges, floods and typhoons, droughts and landslides, as well as fire, tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes. Others are hazards launched through technology such as bio-terrorism and cyber-terrorism. Thus, necessity is place on Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry to prevent the "sick building" syndrome and make the built environment safe, secure, and healthy for mankind. This paper attempts to examine the immediate and remote causes of fail and sick buildings with a view to proffering solutions through the use of technology. Furthermore, the paper presents the application of the available technologies such as e-construction, Geographical Information System (GIS), Computer Aided Design (CAD) and the Global Positioning System (CPS) to the built environment. An integrated design environment within the AEC industry is proposed to allow for modeling, designing, analyzing, and visualizing structures. Thus, the behaviour of structures can be modeled through "virtual reality", leading to the creation of "smart buildings", which are design concepts for this generation

The Technique of Automated Design of Technological Objects with the Application of Artificial Intelligence Elements

The chapter describes the methodology of using artificial intelligence methods to build an integrated environment for computer-aided design components of technological objects based on their classification, integration and configuration. It describes the formation of CAD based on the object-oriented approach, methods of configuring the integrated environment and the organization of single information space. The configuration of the system components and the methodology for organizing the interaction of CAD components, obtaining the final CAD architecture, focused on solving the problem, is shown. The application of the Mamdani method for the formal description of project operations and the use of genetic algorithms to optimize the operational parameters of the process and the design of the technological machine are described

Design Of A CAD/CAM-Simulink Data Exchange System For Machine Tool Application

This paper presents design of a CAD/CAM-Simulink Data Exchange System (CS-DES) that integrates CAD/CAM software and control system architecture with the aim to further enhances capability and flexibility of a prototype milling machine. In its current state, the XY milling table positioning system is controlled using in-house designed position controller that is able to effectively control positions of the milling table using predefined reference trajectory. The application of this position controller is restricted by the signal input forms that are only available via the Simulink reference input signal library. The proposed system design allows integration of the CAD/CAM technology with the MATLAB/Simulink platform of the control system architecture, enabling variations of input signal types. The designed integrated system allows data input in the forms of Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Machining. The main design component of the interface system was developed using MATLAB Graphical User Interactive Development Environment. This paper presents an overview of the system architecture for the CAD/CAM-Simulink data exchange system. A successful implementation of this novel data exchange system would simplify current control system development process thus providing greater flexibility and capability that could be translated into improved performance of the machine tools drives system

An open, integrated modular format - for flexible & intelligible AEC design & production

The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector is fragmented and its computer aided design (CAD) systems suffer data loss, and errors in workflow between design and realisation. An open source, integrated, modular format is proposed to address the technological nature of these problems. Accordingly, this research updates the notion of the modular format as a more flexible and intelligible computational design method by leveraging knowledge from the computer science and manufacturing sectors where the design and realisation process is intentional and explicit. The research design of this paper comprises a theoretical approach combined with an empirical case study. Principles of modularity are extracted from the computer science and manufacturing sectors to assist with a better definition of AEC CAD processes that use materials and resources more efficiently and sustainably. The methodology of the modular format contributes to the emerging concept of a building lifecycle management (BLM) system for the AEC sector

Integration, management and communication of heterogeneous design resources with WWW technologies

Recently, advanced information technologies have opened new pos-sibilities for collaborative designs. In this paper, a Web-based collaborative de-sign environment is proposed, where heterogeneous design applications can be integrated with a common interface, managed dynamically for publishing and searching, and communicated with each other for integrated multi-objective de-sign. The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is employed as an implementation tool to enable integration and communication of design application programs; and the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used as a common data descriptive language for data exchange between heterogeneous applications and for resource description and recording. This paper also intro-duces the implementation of the system and the encapsulating issues of existing legacy applications. At last, an example of gear design based on the system is il-lustrated to identify the methods and procedure developed by this research

Emerging cad and bim trends in the aec education: An analysis from students\u27 perspective

As the construction industry is moving towards collaborative design and construction practices globally, training the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) students professionally related to CAD and BIM became a necessity rather than an option. The advancement in the industry has led to collaborative modelling environments, such as building information modelling (BIM), as an alternative to computer-aided design (CAD) drafting. Educators have shown interest in integrating BIM into the AEC curriculum, where teaching CAD and BIM simultaneously became a challenge due to the differences of two systems. One of the major challenges was to find the appropriate teaching techniques, as educators were unaware of the AEC students’ learning path in CAD and BIM. In order to make sure students learn and benefit from both CAD and BIM, the learning path should be revealed from students’ perspective. This paper summarizes the background and differences of CAD and BIM education, and how the transition from CAD to BIM can be achieved for collaborative working practices. The analysis was performed on freshman and junior level courses to learn the perception of students about CAD and BIM education. A dual-track survey was used to collect responses from AEC students in four consecutive years. The results showed that students prefer BIM to CAD in terms of the friendliness of the user-interface, help functions, and self-detection of mistakes. The survey also revealed that most of the students believed in the need for a BIM specialty course with Construction Management (CM), Structure, and Mechanical-Electrical-Plumbing (MEP) areas. The benefits and challenges of both CAD and BIM-based software from students’ perspectives helps to improve the learning outcomes of CAD/BIM courses to better help students in their learning process, and works as a guideline for educators on how to design and teach CAD/BIM courses simultaneously by considering the learning process and perspectives of students. © 2018 The autho

Towards an Interaction-based Integration of MKM Services into End-User Applications

The Semantic Alliance (SAlly) Framework, first presented at MKM 2012, allows integration of Mathematical Knowledge Management services into typical applications and end-user workflows. From an architecture allowing invasion of spreadsheet programs, it grew into a middle-ware connecting spreadsheet, CAD, text and image processing environments with MKM services. The architecture presented in the original paper proved to be quite resilient as it is still used today with only minor changes. This paper explores extensibility challenges we have encountered in the process of developing new services and maintaining the plugins invading end-user applications. After an analysis of the underlying problems, I present an augmented version of the SAlly architecture that addresses these issues and opens new opportunities for document type agnostic MKM services.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

On-line transformer condition monitoring through diagnostics and anomaly detection

This paper describes the end-to-end components of an on-line system for diagnostics and anomaly detection. The system provides condition monitoring capabilities for two in- service transmission transformers in the UK. These transformers are nearing the end of their design life, and it is hoped that intensive monitoring will enable them to stay in service for longer. The paper discusses the requirements on a system for interpreting data from the sensors installed on site, as well as describing the operation of specific diagnostic and anomaly detection techniques employed. The system is deployed on a substation computer, collecting and interpreting site data on-line

Designing a novel virtual collaborative environment to support collaboration in design review meetings

Project review meetings are part of the project management process and are organised to assess progress and resolve any design conflicts to avoid delays in construction. One of the key challenges during a project review meeting is to bring the stakeholders together and use this time effectively to address design issues as quickly as possible. At present, current technology solutions based on BIM or CAD are information-centric and do not allow project teams to collectively explore the design from a range of perspectives and brainstorm ideas when design conflicts are encountered. This paper presents a system architecture that can be used to support multi-functional team collaboration more effectively during such design review meetings. The proposed architecture illustrates how information-centric BIM or CAD systems can be made human- and team-centric to enhance team communication and problem solving. An implementation of the proposed system architecture has been tested for its utility, likability and usefulness during design review meetings. The evaluation results suggest that the collaboration platform has the potential to enhance collaboration among multi-functional teams

DESIGN ENHANCEMENT AND INTEGRATION OF A PROCESSOR-MEMORY INTERCONNECT NETWORK INTO A SINGLE-CHIP MULTIPROCESSOR ARCHITECTURE

This thesis involves modeling, design, Hardware Description Language (HDL) design capture, synthesis, implementation and HDL virtual prototype simulation validation of an interconnect network for a Hybrid Data/Command Driven Computer Architecture (HDCA) system. The HDCA is a single-chip shared memory multiprocessor architecture system. Various candidate processor-memory interconnect topologies that may meet the requirements of the HDCA system are studied and evaluated related to utilization within the HDCA system. It is determined that the Crossbar network topology best meets the HDCA system requirements and it is therefore used as the processormemory interconnect network of the HDCA system. The design capture, synthesis, implementation and HDL simulation is done in VHDL using XILINX ISE 6.2.3i and ModelSim 5.7g CAD softwares. The design is validated by individually testing against some possible test cases and then integrated into the HDCA system and validated against two different applications. The inclusion of crossbar switch in the HDCA architecture involved major modifications to the HDCA system and some minor changes in the design of the switch. Virtual Prototype testing of the HDCA executing applications when utilizing crossbar interconnect revealed proper functioning of the interconnect and HDCA. Inclusion of the interconnect into the HDCA now allows it to implement dynamic node level reconfigurability and multiple forking functionality