Creating and Using 3D City Models

City modelling is a topic which has been on the agenda for a long time. Today crucial questions concerning the creation of a city model are resolved. The vision of the automatic generation of the 3D geometry of a city out of high resolution digital aerial images is a reality now. These new developments decreased the cost for creating and maintaining a 3D city model of a complete city significantly. This paper wants to outline the “history” of 3D city models and show recent developments in this field. An overview about current applications and uses in this field in Austria and the implementation into daily work is shown with examples (Graz and Vienna city models). Additionally the new developments like Street View in Google Earth or Birdis Eye in Virtual earth are discussed in relation to their 3D “relatives”

Three Dimensional Computer Models in Development Planning

The paper shows a way to use computer generated spatial models in planning to increase the quality of development planning inside a community and to enable a better vision of future developments in showing the spatial impact of possible solutions inside a bandwidth of surface utilisation and density. It describes the application of this technique to give the specialists and the members of a community a comparatively easy to use tool to show the impact of planning decisions and therefore increase the discussion about a desirable future

Digital Design: 21th eCAADe Conference Proceedings

Digital Design is not only the title of the 21st eCAADe conference 2003 in Graz but also one of the main keywords in Architectural Education nowadays. Information Technology has managed to influence all fields of the “architectural process” and has developed straight from the calculation tools of the engineers over the CAD drafting boards of big architectural firms to every architectural professional and student. This process was incredibly quick in terms of the architectural chronology but very slow in terms of architectural education at universities (at least in Austria). Not very long ago it was sometimes forbidden to deliver CAD drawings for design projects at our faculty. In fact, the early experiments in using the computer in the design process quite often failed because of the restrictions of the available (and affordable) hard-and software. Today, even our first year students start some of their earliest design experiences quite naturally with the computer. However, there are still many questions to be answered and maybe some new questions to be asked in the relationship between architectural design and the computer. Architectural design is mainly a “game of imagination” and today computer tools start to enhance and support the architects visions after a longer period where they were often reduced by the limitations of the tools. Still, there are many different ways to design because every designer has a different approach towards architectural design and there is no such thing as “the perfect digital design tool” for everyone. We hope that this conference with all the different approaches documented in this book plays a major role in the discussion and development of all these aspects and brings us “one step further”

Collaborative Teamwork GRAWI \u2797: the Third Attempt to "Internet-Design"

The abbreviation GraWi is made up of the combination of first letters of the Austrian university sites of GRAz and WIen (Vienna) and stands for the follow-up model of BraGraLuWi having involved also the universities of BRAtislava and LUton in 1996. A joint project-design had already been carried out in 1995 (BraGraLu). The present contribution is aimed at assessing the project

Pen or PC? - is Sketching essential to architectural design?

This paper reports on an ongoing student architectural design project that is investigating the differing effects of the use of PC's or Pens in the design process. We are interested to see whether designing wholly on the computer with a volume modelling software would produce differing results to a traditional design process with a strong basis in 2D sketching. To minimize the influence of the participants previous experience in either the use of PCis or the pen, we have been working with very young students that have not yet gone through a traditional training on architectural design and CAAD software. This is one of the key aspects of our experimental procedure. We have found that recent software developments in the field of CAAD clearly have and will influence the way architects design and brings the computer as a design tool to the “normal architect”. Until very recently the computer was seen as a design tool almost solely for “computer geeks” in the profession, the majority of architects still using it mainly as a drafting machine or to produce visualizations of their projects after a more “conventional” design process had finished. It is now very clear to us that the ongoing change in technology will have a profound effect on the way all of us will work in future undertaking architectural design. It is an important question for every school of architecture what effect these developments will have on our teaching methods and the curricula.  We use the above mentioned ongoing educational project to find out about the benefits and risks of using the computer as a design tool for first year students

Round Table Session on “3D-City-Modeling”

According to eCAADe's mission, the exchange and collaboration within the area of computer aided architectural design education and research, while respecting the pedagogical and administrative approaches in the different schools and countries, can be regarded as a core activity. On the occasion of eCAADe 2001 in Helsinki a working session on the topic “3D-City-Modelling” was held, in which a variety bundle of papers was presented. The eCAADe 2002 round table session on “3D-City-Modelling” is opening up for an intensive discussion on a number of goals which were elaborated by a working group in Helsinki