Encarnaçao, M.

Koch, V.

Linnert, C.

Storck, A.

KITopen

1 LinnertVirtual building lifecycle -Giving architects access to the future of buildings by visualizing lifecycle dataDipl.-Ing. Christoph Linnert1, Dr. L. Miguel Encarnação2, Dipl.-Inform. AndréStork3, Dipl.-Ing. Volker Koch4AbstractToday’s software for architects and civil engineers is lacking support for theevaluation and improvement of building lifecycles. Facility Management Systemsand 4D-CAD try to integrate lifecycle data and make them better accessible, butmiss the investigation of the development of the structure itself.Much money is inappropriately spent when materials with different life expectan-cies are combined in the wrong way and building parts are repaired or replaced tooearly or too late. With the methods of scientific visualization and real-time 3D-graphics these deficiencies can be eliminated.The project “Virtual Building Lifecycle” (short VBLC, [W-VBLC]) connects 3Dgeometrical information to research data such as life expectancy and emissionsand to standard database information like prices. The automated visualization ofcritical points of the structure in the past, presence and future is a huge advantageand helps engineers to improve the duration of the lifecycle and reduce the costs.Key wordsVisualization, lifecycle, virtual building, realtime 3D graphics, architecturaldatabase, 4D-CAD, Facility Management                                                1 abaXX Technology GmbH, Augustenstrasse 124, 70197 Stuttgart, Germany, christoph.linnert@gmx.net2 Fraunhofer Center for Research in Computer Graphics, Inc., 321 S. Main Street, Providence, RI02903, USA, mencarna@crcg.edu3 Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD), Rundeturmstrasse 6, 64283 Darmstadt,Germany, stork@igd.fhg.de4 Institut for Industrial Building Production (ifib), University of Karlsruhe, Kaiserstrasse 12, 76128Karlsruhe, Germany, volker.koch@ifib.uni-karlsruhe.de2 Linnert1. IntroductionThe end of the 20th century is marked by an immense growth of informationwhich is continually increasing in its availability and speed of delivery (e.g.through databases on CD-ROM and the internet). This has also markedlyincreased the difficulty in finding and evaluating the information that is sought. Itis also increasingly important to have the required information as soon as it isavailable or, at the latest, when it is required.This problem plays a large role in the building industry and it is particularlycritical through the singular nature of the projects and their attendant informationstructures. A large quantity of material and energy flows are involved within thelifetime of a building. A building could be considered as a temporary storagewhere each installed „sin“ will eventually be removed: at the demolition at thelatest. In viewing a building with this method, it becomes apparent that evaluatingthe life cycle of various building parts over an average lifetime of 80 years is moreimportant than ever. Not only new construction, but also the optimization of use,reuse and conservation of existing buildings requires planning tools that useinnovative CAx Technologies.2. Related workThe project unifies the characteristics of scientific visualization, 4D-CAD andFacility Management systems. The Center for Integrated Facility Management atStanford University, CA, USA, namely Prof. John Kunz, Prof. Martin Fischer andtheir colleagues,  is conducting several research projects about the integration oftime into 3D-CAD-Systems (CIFE, [W-4DHome]).The Institute for Industrial Building Production (ifib, [W-ifib]) at the University ofKarlsruhe, Germany with Prof. Niklas Kohler is conducting research in  the areaof architectural lifecycle data.The presented prototype has some features in common with commercial 4D-CAD-Software as for example Bentley´s Dynamic Animator and Schedule Simulator.Furthermore it is related to commercial Facility Management software as forexample Nemetschek´s ALLFA.3. Hardware and software environmentThe prototype implementation of the VBLC concept is done in form of anextension to our 3D modeling system ARCADE (Advanced Realism CADEnvironment). ARCADE is designed in an object-oriented way (see section 5.1),which eases extensions towards new requirements such as integration the fourthdimension: time.The aim of ARCADE is to explore VR hardware technology such as 3D input andoutput devices for the modeling process and support the user by appropriate direct3D interaction techniques. Real-time stereoscopic rendering and visual hints aidthe perception of spatial relationships of static anf dynamic scenes. By pluging3 LinnertVBLC into ARCADE the interaction, visualization and navigation techniques arefully accessible to VBLC. It is possible - for instance - to walk through a buildingwhile it ages.The commercial architectural database “sirAdos” [sirAdos98] provides thesemantic data, e.g. life expectancy , unit prices, to be visualized.The standard hardware configuration for a desktop workplace consists of aSpaceMouse as 3D input device and a monitor with stereoscopic output incombination with stereo-glasses.4. ApproachThe idea of the "Virtual Building Lifecycle" (short VBLC, [W-VBLC]) is tovisualize data from an architectural database on a 3D-CAD model of a building.The user should be enabled to get access to values like “unit price” and “lifeexpectancy” while navigating around and through the virtual model. She then canretrieve information by picking objects of interest or get an impression of thelifecycle of the structure by activating different visualization modes.This visualization is realized by a protoype-plugin to a research based 3D-CADsystem. The 3D geometry can be imported via different standard interfaces (ACIS,STEP, OpenInventor, VRML) with or without supplemental data. VBLC allows toadd arbitrary data to the model. The semantic information from a database thatbelong to a certain 3D objects in the scene can then be accessed and an visualized.The commercial architectural database provides information about constructionmaterials and elements in a certain order. The information connected to singleobjects of the 3D model follow this structure.The program provides intuitive and rapid access to numerical and graphicalinformation from a database. Like any type of scientific visualization it is meant tohelp to find and compare requested data faster and more efficient than if a searchwas performed on tables and texts. It is not meant to be a photo-realisticvisualization (or animation) of a building.Professions that benefit from the VBLC approach are architects and engineers intheir functions as designers, facility managers, researchers and teachers.5. Technical details5.1. System architectureThe development of ARCADE is partly done within the project CAD ReferenceModel [W-CAD-RM]. ARCADE's system architecture is object-oriented andconformant with the one proposed by the Reference Model project.Figure 1 shows the relevant parts of the system architecture of ARCADE. Thegraphical input and output of ARCADE is based on OpenInventor [W-OpenIn],whereas the modeling functionality uses the ACIS kernel [W-Spat]. The Graph-4 LinnertIO-Manager on the one hand and the Modeller on the other hand encapsulate thesetwo representations of the same geometrical object. The Object-Manager takescare of the consistency between the different representations of each object. Theuser interface is generated using X/Motif and UIL [W-XMotif].The VBLC-General-Manager (short VG-Manager) is the central control of VBLC.It handles all general manipulations such as reading from and writing to.The VBLC-Info-Manager (short VI-Manager) is responsible for the attachment ofthe correct numerical data to the geometrical objects, and it has to provide theaccess to these data afterwards.Figure 1: System architecture of ARCADE with VBLC.5.2. Data inputFor the implementation of VBLC the problem of accessing the data was solvedwith a simplification in two steps. The three levels of access, starting with thehighest, are:1. Direct access to the database from the application via ODBC with SQL,2. The application reads the necessary data from a specific collection of text-filesthat represent the database,3. The data necessary for a special demo model is hard-coded.The first level is the most elegant and flexible one. The sirAdos database is basedon the Paradox format [W-Para]. The standard of the ODBC knows this formatand, therefore, the database can be accessed from all applications that are able touse ODBC. With the Select Query Language (SQL) this way the necessary valuescan be read out from sirAdos.ModellerGraph-IO-Manager(Display-Manager)Dialog-ManagerUI-ManagerX /MotifHistory-ManagerUI-Layouter Object-ManagerOpenInventorACISVBLC-Info-ManagerVBLC-General-ManagerSirAdos-DBaccess viaODBC5 LinnertAt the second level the database is represented by a specific system of text-files.Therefore, all relevant data was exported from the standard database front-end andsome data added from the research data source. These database files are stored inthe format with comma separated values, specified by the extension ‘*.csv’. Thisformat was chosen because the export of ‘csv’-data is supported by the sirAdos-database.For the first implementation of VBLC the data access was more simplified. To geta visual result and an impression of the visualization fast, an example 3D. It is amodel of a small house with only 40 graphical objects. For these objects a sampledata set was created from the database and then hard-coded in the application.The VBLC-InfoManager reads and manager these data. Internally the VBLC-InfoManager is prepared for ODBC access.For the import of the geometry standard interfaces of ARCADE (ACIS,OpenInventor) were used.6. Session examplesThe system shows the state of a building at any time with two main modes. Thefirst mode visualizes only the dates (times) of the building lifecycle. It uses theconstruction and destruction date and the life expectancy. The option “Normaldecay” demonstrates how a building without maintenance would probably decay.The user gets a different impression when the option “Life expectancy” isselected. Now the construction parts fade out according to the life expectancyvalue (Figure 2).Figure 2: Visualization of a house with VBLC. It shows the situation at a certain time infuture. Objects which have reached the end of their life expectancy are displayedtransparent.In a second mode the values are mapped to a basic color ranging from light todark. Values that depend on a visualization time, as the age of a building part or6 Linnertthe remaining life time, change, when the user moves a slider specifying the“current visualization time” (Figure 3).Figure 3: The color visualization for the data type “Age”. The “Set Time” window usedto manipulate the current time. Light objects are “younger”, because they were main-tained somehow recently.7. ConclusionsIn general, the whole process of accessing data by a walk-through and selectinggeometry objects is satisfying and motivating. Important extreme values can berapidly recognized in a very intuitive way. The localization of necessary actions iseasier than by studying tables or lists of numbers and the visual way to analyzedata seems to be much more comfortable and less fatiguing.These statements appear trivial according to the model used for this project. But itis easy to imagine that the advantages of such a visualization become crucial whenthe methods are applied to 3D models and Virtual Environments ten or hundredtimes bigger than a small two floor building.The project addresses in conjunction challenges of scientific color visualization,4D-CAD and Facility Management (FM) systems. The new feature is thecombination of the visualization of the construction phase and the addition of userdata to a 3D model of a building. Both parts are integrated in the prototype andappear under the same layout. The data can be accessed and modified at any timeand position in the model. The difference to common FM-systems is that the focusalways lays on the lifecycle of the construction itself. Facilities or technicalaggregates are not treated in any special way.The connection of the prototype with a specific database is a logical step andcommon in most of today´s FM systems. The visualization of data from anarchitectural database using a color mapping is a new approach to access thesedata. The advantage of the sirAdos database is the provision of a system for7 Linnertstructuring buildings in several levels of elements, which completely describe theconstruction.8. Further workThere are many further development possibilities for this project. The first pointconcerns the import- and export-possibilities of data and the integration to other,especially commercial 3D-CAD software. The following remarks consider thedata base access, the navigation and the visualization itself.The development on the market shows that most of the leading 3D-CAD systemsas well as 3D-animation software are quite successful with a semi-openarchitecture. They provide several import- and export file formats for the modelsand their attributes, and they are open for plug-ins. These plug-ins are mostlydeveloped by independent software companies and form a wide market them-selves.For VBLC in ARCADE an import via ACIS, already supplied with databasevalues, would be an interesting feature. As stated previously, this functionality issupported by ACIS, and a corresponding implementation in ARCADE can easilybe performed.Thus, 3D-geometry already enriched with sirAdos data is necessary. As far as theresearchers at ifib are aware of, up until now nobody is using such a combination.But increasingly architects and engineers add data to their 3D-models already inthe design phase, and one can expect, that the commercial 3D-CAD-systems willsupport this stronger in the future, and eventually include architectural databasesor force the production of plug-ins thereof.Consequently, also the data analysis functionality of VBLC could be implementedas a visualizing plug-in for the leading 3D-CAD-software. A similar project wassuccessfully completed at Fraunhofer IGD in Darmstadt. It is named MiroWalkand provides a design review with an interactive walk-through as a plug-in for the3D-CAD-software Bentley Microstation [W-MiroW].Another challenging feature for VBLC is the support of a cooperative analysisinside of ARCADE or as an independent lean tool like the Shared-Viewer [W-Shared], which was developed by the Fraunhofer IGD in cooperation withindustry.An important aspect to discuss for further development is the access to thedatabase. A direct request in SQL via ODBC would follow standardization trendsand should be implemented, and other leading architectural databases might beconsidered as well.A research-oriented development could include the investigation and visualizationof the influence of the construction location, like geographic location, orientation(north- or south-front), climatic zone and weather, plants around and on thebuilding. And there are many other factors that influence the lifecycle of aconstruction and could be visualized.8 Linnert9. AcknowledgementsThe authors express their gratitude to Dr. Joachim Rix of the Fraunhofer IGD andthe INI-GraphicsNet [W-INI] Student and Scholar Exchange program [W-SSEP],which gave the financial support to this work. Many employees and students ofFraunhofer IGD and CRCG made important contributions to this work.We thank Prof. Dr. Niklaus Kohler of ifib for the initiation of the project andmany assitants of his institute for the cooperation. The company Edition AUM /sirAdos made their database available and usable for our work.10. References[sirAdos98] sirAdos Baudaten. Edition AUM, Dachau, Germany.November 1998. http://www.sirados.de[W-4DHome] 4D Research at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.http://www.stanford.edu/group/4D/4D-home.htm[W-ARCADE] ARCADE – Advanced Realism CAD Environment.Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany.http://www.igd.fhg.de/www/igd-a2/Projekte/Arcade/arcade_e.html[W-CAD-RM] CAD Reference Model. Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany.http://www.igd.fhg.de/www/igd-a2/Projekte/CAD_Ref/cad_ref_e.html[W-ifib] Homepage of the Institute for Industrial Building Production(ifib), University of Karlsruhe, Germanyhttp://www.ifib.uni-karlsruhe.de[W-INI] Homepage of the International Network of Institutions foradvanced education, training and R&D in Computer Graphicstechnology, systems and applications (INI-GraphicsNet)http://www.inigraphics.net[W-MiroW] MiroWalk - Design Review in Factory Planing.Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany.http://www.igd.fhg.de/www/igd-a2/Projekte/MiroWalk/MiroWalk_e.html[W-Shared] HP Shared-Viewer. Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany.http://www.igd.fhg.de/www/igd-a2/Projekte/3DViewer/3dviewer_e.html[W-SSEP] Fraunhofer CRCG Student and Scholar Exchange Programhttp://www.inigraphics.net/students/index.html[W-VBLC] Homepage of the project “Virtual Building LifeCycle”.http://www.crcg.edu/vblc

Virtual Building Lifecycle - Giving Architetcs Access to the Future of Buildings by Visualizing Lifecycle Data

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Virtual Building Lifecycle - Giving Architetcs Access to the Future of Buildings by Visualizing Lifecycle Data

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