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1999
Diploma Thesis
Titel
Virtual Building Lifecycle - Visualization of Lifecycle Data on a virtual model of a building in a 3D-CAD environment
Alternative
Virtueller Lebenszyklus eines Bauwerks - Visualisierung von Lebensdauer-Daten am virtuellen Gebäudemodell innerhalb eines 3D-CAD-Systems
Abstract
Today's software for architects and civil engineers lacks of support for the evaluation and improvement of the building lifecycle. Facility Management Systems and 4D-CAD try to integrate lifecycle data and make them better accessible, but miss the investigation of the development of the structure itself. Much money is wasted because materials with different life expectancies are combined in the wrong way and building parts are repaired or replaced to early or to late. With the methods of scientific visualization and real-time 3D-graphics these deficiencies can be eliminated. This thesis connects 3D geometrical data to research data such as life expectancy and emissions and to standard database information like unit prices. The automated visualization of critical points of the structure in the past, presence and future is a huge advantage and helps engineers to improve the duration of the lifecycle and reduce the costs. The idea of the thesis was implemented as a protoype plugin, the so -called VBLC, to the CAD system ARCADE (Advanced Realism CAD Environment). ARCADE is a 3D modeling system with a real-time rendering viewer. The commercial architectural database "sirAdos" delivers the semantic data. The prototype system shows the state of a building at any time with two main modes. The first mode visualizes only the dates (times) of the building lifecycle. It uses the construction and destruction date and the life expectancy. The option "Normal decay" demonstrates how a building without maintenance would probably decay. The user gets a different impres-sion when the option "Life expectancy" is selected. Now the construction parts fade out ac-cording to the life expectancy value. In the second mode the values are expressed by applying a basic color in a range from light to dark onto the objects. Values that depend on a visualization time, as the age of a building part or the remaining life time, change, when the user moves a slider specifying the "current visua lizatio n time". Professions that benefit from the VBLC approach are architects and engineers in their functions as designers, facility managers, researchers and teachers. The data analysis component of VBLC could be implemented as a visualizing plug-in for 3D-CAD-software or as a platform-independent Java3D application and as applet with full interaction in a web-browser, supporting cooperative analysis over the Internet.
ThesisNote
Karlsruhe, Univ., Dipl.-Arb., 1999