Build–An Integrated System for Building Design

BUILD is a pilot version of a computer system for research in computer-aided building design being implemented as a subsystem of the Integrated Civil Engineering System (ICES) which is being developed in the Civil Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It provides a problem-oriented language for a limited but integrated description of a building whose geometry is based on the rectangular parallelepiped. It permits the user to specify a configuration of spaces, to indicate the materials of which surfaces are composed, to generate a structural frame at the edges of the spaces, and to make selective takeoffs of areas, volumes, weights, and costs. Geometric and topological data for the structure are in a form suitable for subsequent analysis using the Structural Design Language (STRUDL). In its present rudimentary state of development, BUILD is not a practical design system but a tool for studying problems of modeling buildings in computers. The research is directed toward an integrated information base which explicitly records interactions among design data and is capable of incremental extension in scope and detail.