Esscad: Expert System Integrating Construction Scheduling with Cad Drawing

This paper presents an expert system ESSCAD developed for integrating construction scheduling with CAD drawing. The system, which was developed mainly with knowledge-based system programming technique and software integrating technique, can automatically interpret the CAD drawings of a building and extract data of its building components, breakdown the project into activities, determine the logic dependencies among activities, estimate the work quantities and durations of activities, finally generate a primary construction schedule for the project. As it was integrated with a CAD drafting system AutoCAD and a scheduling software MS-Project, it retains the advanced functions of CAD drafting and network analysis. A sample application of ESSCAD to schedule a reinforced concrete frame structure building directly from its AutoCAD drawings is also presented.