The Room Connectivity Graph: Shape Retrieval in the Architectural Domain

While advances in CAD modeling techniques led to an ever increasing number of available architectural 3D models, reusability of these models as templates or as inspiration sources is still very limited. One reason for this is that there exist basically no shape retrieval methods specialized in the architectural domain. In this work, we therefore present a method to efficiently characterize 3D architectural models according to the underlying arrangement of their rooms by a room connectivity graph. In this graph, rooms are represented by attributed nodes. Connections between rooms, i.e. doors or windows, are represented by attributed edges. We show that these attributed graphs can be used for an efficient retrieval of 3D architectural models using fast graph matching techniques.