The Development of an Intelligent, Integrated Building Design System Within the European COMBINE Project

There are two main issues to be resolved in order that design tools can be used in cooperative mode, each communicating with the other. Firstly, there is a need to put in place a consistent product model of a building and its systems from which disparate design tools can obtain their inputs and return their outputs. Secondly, there is the requirement to manage the transactions between users and design tools. These issues were addressed within the European COMBINE project. This paper is concerned with the latter issue. It describes the basis and operation of an intelligent, integrated building design system, or IIBDS, which is able to coordinate designer-to-designer, designer-to-application and application-toapplication transactions, against rules which describe the purpose of a given design session. The IIBDS is able to address ‘shallow’ control, where the design tools are sequenced, and ‘deep’ control, where knowledge is introduced in relation to design purpose so that design tool use is constrained within a given design session.