(continued)

In cases where a building is still sketchy, the BDA creates "smart defaults" to fill in the gaps of missing data. For example it retrieves performance data developed by the Department of Energy and ASHRAE to specify wall insulation levels even before a wall material has been selected.

Thus, the architect can perform the high-level performance evaluations even during schematic design. Moreover, the BDA supports multiple simultaneous building data definitions so the architect can compare various configurations.

The BDA sports its own Schematic Graphic Editor that allows the designer to input a simple sketch of the building design, but Papamichael expects to also develop links to commercially available object-oriented CAD systems, such as Autodesk's AutoCAD Architectural Desktop. In the future, the BDA will link to any number of architectural applications, such as cost estimating, environmental impact analysis, and electronic product catalogs.

This is the fifth part of a six-part series on innovative research projects that will eventually lead to exciting design tools for architects. Next week this series concludes with a report on how one software developer expects to see a change in the culture of design.

B.J. Novitski is managing editor for ArchitectureWeek and author of Rendering Real and Imagined Buildings.

This article first appeared in Architectural Record, December, 1999.

The Building Browser helps building designers quickly navigate the many descriptive and performance parameters addressed by the analysis and visualization tools linked to BDA. Image: Konstantinos Papamichael