A virtual environment for the design and simulated construction of prefabricated buildings

The construction industry has acknowledged that its current working practices are in need of substantial improvements in quality and efficiency and has identified that computer modelling techniques and the use of prefabricated components can help reduce times, costs, and minimise defects and problems of on-site construction. This paper describes a virtual environment to support the design and construction processes of buildings from prefabricated components and the simulation of their construction sequence according to a project schedule. The design environment can import a library of 3-D models of prefabricated modules that can be used to interactively design a building. Using Microsoft Project, the construction schedule of the designed building can be altered, with this information feeding back to the construction simulation environment. Within this environment the order of construction can be visualised using virtual machines. Novel aspects of the system are that it provides a single 3-D environment where the user can construct their design with minimal user interaction through automatic constraint recognition and view the real-time simulation of the construction process within the environment. This takes this area of research a step forward from other systems that only allow the planner to view the construction at certain stages, and do not provide an animated view of the construction process

ASSISTED NAVIGATION AND NATURAL INTERACTION FOR VIRTUAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE. IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ATTRACTOR-BASED APPROACH USING A GAME ENGINE

In this paper, the authors propose a new way to navigate inside virtual architectural environments such as those used in the field of Virtual Archaeology. This approach is based on the study of human movement inside real buildings. Authors describe the design of a computer aided navigation system that could facilitate visitors of virtual reconstructions in taking their journey inside digital 3D environments in a more human-like manner. This research considers aspects related to human attention and non-linear narratives in order to develop a new computer aided navigation paradigm using excellent capabilities of real-time visualisation, interaction and human-computer interfacing provided by a game engine. This system obtains information from the virtual environment, which is perceptually enriched by the presence of metainformation associated to the importance in terms of interest of every part, space or element present in the scene. Using this tool, the designer of the experience can influence the user walkthrough in the virtual archaeological environment to meet the expectations of the visit, follow thematic paths or adapt to different user profiles

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Cloning Techniques for Architectural Virtual Environments

We made the first attempt towards building effective domain-specific interaction techniques for a cloning task. Five interaction techniques were designed and evaluated considering different aspects of domain requirements and human limitations. We demonstrated their effectiveness of designed techniques in two usability studies. The results suggested that no single technique is best for all task conditions. Techniques designed for cloning improved the domain task performance profoundly. The work suggests a further direction: passing domain knowledge to the design process to increase the usefulness of VEs

CAD and virtual reality in construction

Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-184).Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007.published_or_final_versio

Coupling BIM and game engine technologies for construction knowledge enhancement

Interactions and collaboration between parties in construction projects are often characterised by misunderstandings and poor information exchange. Game engine technologies, when employed with building information modelling (BIM), can help address these shortcomings. Quite often, the visualisation capabilities of BIM models are not explored fully partly because of their limited interactive capability. While game engines are powerful in visualisation and interactions in the gaming industry, the literature suggests a lack of understanding of the applicability of the same in construction. This study investigates the potential of the use of game engines in construction practice which culminated in a framework that can guide the implementation of the same in enhancing interactive building walkthroughs

Communicating building simulation outputs to users

Copious amounts of data are generated by contemporary building simulation (BS) programs and the translation of these data to information that may be acted upon is problematic. Although graphs are an effective way of displaying quantitative information, they are unable to support experiential appraisals whereby building performance can be fully comprehended. To achieve this requires the use of multimedia techniques, includeing colour, sound and animation. This paper reports the interim results from a PhD project that is developing a web-enabled program to assist in the interpretation of the performance trends inherent in large data sets as produced by BS programs. The aim is to identify and link key performance concepts and support an inter-comparison of alternative design hypotheses