www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Automation in Constructio

Visualisation in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC)

Dino Bouchlaghem*, Huiping Shang, Jennifer Whyte, Abdulkadir Ganah

Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK

Received 1 February 2004; received in revised form 1 July 2004; accepted 1 August 2004

Abstract

In the architecture, engineering and construction industries, computer visualization usage can cover the whole lifecycle of a

product from presentation of initial concepts to the final stages of production and can also extend to maintenance issues. Three-

dimensional walkthroughs can be created from hand drawn sketches at the very early stages of the design process. Three-

dimensional models can be used by design teams to communicate design intent to client and users and to compare and evaluate

design options. During more advanced stages of design, three-dimensional representations can be used to check the integrity of

services coordination, accessibility and maintainability. During construction, visualization can facilitate the interpretation of

design details by site operatives. The concept of visualization is not limited to modeling physical objects but can extend to the

representation of abstract data sets of the type obtained from simulation programs used in performance assessment or from

Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications. This paper will review the application of visualization in the process of

design and construction and then present findings from three research projects that made use of some of these techniques at

various stages of the process: for collaborative working during concept design stage, for design development and marketing in

the house building sector, and for the modeling of design details during the construction stage.

D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Visualisation; Architecture; Engineering; Construction

1. Introduction

In design applications, visualization is not an end

in itself. The process of design and visualization

should be iterative, with changes made as a result of

insights gained through visualization propagated into

the next version of the design. The iterative nature of

0926-5805/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2004.08.012

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: n.m.bouchlaghem@lboro.ac.uk

(D. Bouchlaghem).

this process requires adequate software support and

thought processes should not be interrupted by a

requirement to translate the design concepts into

software terms for visualization [1].

The design of the urban environment involves

many stakeholders. These different stakeholders, who

view the process from different perspectives, include

professionals such as engineers, architects, and

planners and non-specialists such as clients and users.

Collaborative building design requires a shared

understanding to be reached between all of the parties

n 14 (2005) 287–295

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295288

involved. 3D visualization techniques can facilitate

this shared understanding across interdisciplinary

groups. Virtual Reality (VR), for example, offers a

natural medium for building design providing three-

dimensional visualization that can be manipulated in

real-time and can be used collaboratively to explore

design options and simulate different stages of the

construction process. In the future, it may be possible

to generate and print two-dimensional CAD drawings

directly from the VR models used for architectural

design. However, in order for the use of VR to mature

to such a level, the integration of its use with existing

technologies such as CAD needs to become the focus

of research [2], and appropriate standards and proto-

cols need to be developed.

In this paper applications and benefits of 3D

visualization and virtual reality in the built environ-

ment field are reviewed followed by the presentation

of three case study applications where different

visualization techniques are implemented and trailed

at different stages of the design and construction

process, early conceptual design, design development,

and finally on site construction. Conclusion are then

drawn, based on this work, regarding the barriers in

the way of realizing full benefits from visualization

technologies in the AEC industry.

2. Visualization and VR in AEC

2.1. Building design and construction

Architectural design has been the main driving

force for developments in 3D modeling and Virtual

Reality. By allowing architects to visualize and

immerse themselves in the their designs, a much

clearer understanding is gained of both the qualitative

and quantitative nature of the space they are designing.

Visualization and VR enable designers to evaluate

proportion and scale using intuitive interactive model-

ing environments [3] and simulate the effects of

lighting, ventilation and acoustics in internal environ-

ments [4,5]. The use of visualization in this area also

includes the simulation of egress from buildings for the

design of fire escape routes [6]. As a visualization tool

VR is also used to communicate design ideas from

designers to clients by generating walkthrough models

to test the design with the clients in a more direct

manner [7]. Visualization can also be used to model

the construction sequence in order to simulate and

monitor site progress. This is done using a pre-

prepared library of 3D graphical images of building

components, facilities etc. and their related activities,

and generate models representing views of the con-

struction sequence at any given time of the process [8].

At a larger scale of visualization Web-based Virtual

Reality techniques generated a lot of activity in Urban

modeling which led to the introduction of the concept

of bVirtual CitiesQ [9]. The most popular approach in

the development of these 3D models is using VRML

(Virtual Reality Modeling Language), which is a Web

modeling language that is able to construct objects in

three dimensions.

Another application of visualization technologies,

which is gaining momentum in this field of research,

is environmental simulation for landscape design

practice. Here many attempts were made to demon-

strate the use of VR in environmental design [10–17]

highlighting the limitations and problems still to be

overcome. Most of these studies highlighted the

benefits of future potential that visualization technol-

ogies can offer in the field of environmental simu-

lation. Furthermore, the use of some of these

techniques for the environmental assessment of new

developments has already been demonstrated through

a number of examples including the Tower of London

project [18] and new developments in the city centre

of Bath [19].

2.2. Collaborative environments

Visualization technologies such as VR have given

birth to Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs)

within which users are virtually co-located and can

interact with one another. One example of this is the

Virtual Meeting Room (VMR), which represents an

extension of the concept of desktop video-confer-

encing. In a virtual meeting room, team members are

able to interact intuitively in 3D space and feel as

though they were all in the same room. This is

considered to be more realistic than desktop confer-

encing but requires the use of appropriate metaphors

to represent both real world objects and, the collab-

orating parties. It is essential in VMR that normal

meeting room decorum is observed and that all

members of the team can see and hear one another

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295 289

[20]. This technology is still in its infancy and does

not at present support realistic pictorial representation

of the parties present in a meeting. Collaborative

virtual environments can also be a medium for the

remote collaboration of urban designers, and the

discussion of urban proposals by the general public.

At present the benefits that visualization and VR

can bring to the construction industry are fully

appreciated by the majority of practitioners. However

despite the continually falling costs associated with

the hardware and software, there remains a big

obstacle to its full uptake, this is the low compatibility

between VR and the existing CAD infrastructures

making its implementation costly due to the resource

intensive task of creating the models.

3. Case studies of visualisation applications in the

AEC industry

3.1. Visualisation at conceptual design stage

This project is investigating the particular needs of

concurrent conceptual design, a challenging area

requiring the development of novel techniques to deal

with the designers’ needs to rapidly develop and

assess ideas. At the core of these needs is the ability to

Fig. 1. From 2D drawing

collaboratively access and use visualisation tools at an

early stage of design for the visualisation of design

concepts and collaborative design development. For

this an IT tool is being developed (INTEGRA) to

support concurrent conceptual design using the

Internet as a communication medium.

The INTEGRA system is being implemented as an

bintegratedQ environment, with multiple applications

rolled into a single coherent system. Its software

components are also illustrated in Fig. 2. It includes

eight functional components: (1) user agent, (2) client

briefing tool, (3) cost modelling tool, (4) constraints

checking tool, (5) risk assessment tool, (6) sketching

and drawing tool, (7) 3D visualisation tool, and (8)

synchronous and asynchronous communication tool.

The user agent resides in the user agent layer; client

briefing, cost modelling, constraints checking, risk

assessment, sketching and drawing, and 3D visual-

isation tool are distributed in the application tools

layer. Synchronous and asynchronous communication

is implemented in the communication layer.

In the visualization component of the system, 2D

sketches and drawings can be turned into 3D

panoramic views using this tools. It uses the MGI

Photovista software (MGI Software Corp 2000)

within the Web browser. Fig. 1 shows the process

from 2D sketches to 3D panorama.

to 3D panorama.

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295290

This visualization tool is supported by sketching

and drawing tools integrated within the main Web

interface with the aid of legacy systems, here AEC

professionals can draw sketches using four methods:

freehand sketching, AutoDesk Architectural Desktop

(ADT), AutoDesk AutoSketch, and Painter Classic

software (Fig. 2). In addition, external hardware (e.g.

WACOM Intuos Graphics Tablet System) is used to

respond to user actions. The Intuos Graphics Tablet

System consists of two elements: a graphics tablet

serves as drawing work area, and the Intuos tool such

as Intuos pen is a pressure-sensitive freehand device

for image editing and creating. The WACOM control

panel is designed to be customized and keep track of

Intuos tools setting. Different tool settings can be

customized for different applications. The INTEGRA

system allows for 3D models to be generated at

different stages of the conceptual design process using

tools and methods appropriate for each stage.

3.2. Visualisation in the house building sector

In this project the potential of visualization and VR

in the house building sector of the construction

industry was explored. The house building industry

Fig. 2. Sketching and

is standardised to an extent common in the manu-

facturing industries and the number of standard house

types used by any particular housing developer is

relatively low. The housing developer involved in this

project used fifteen basic layouts, with variations to

the facade and detailing bringing the total number up

of house types to about forty. AutoCAD data relating

to a standard house type was obtained from the

housing developer, and a virtual model of that house

type was then created.

VR is being widely tried within the construction

industry for design applications, for collaborative

visualisation and as a tool to improve construction

processes [21] but it is currently implemented in an ad

hoc fashion [22]. This project investigated the

effective implementation of PC-based VR systems in

the industry. A number of VR systems, including

Superscape, VRML and World Tool Kit, have been

tested to assess their suitability for integrated use in

the house building sector of the construction industry.

Although it is already possible to create virtual reality

models from within VR packages, for the use of VR

in construction industry, the transfer of geometrical

data between CAD and VR is desirable to avoid

repetitive work [23]. The trials undertaken by the

drawing tool.

Fig. 4. Screen shot of a VR model of the standard house type in a

browser.

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295 291

authors have posed the question of how to transfer

data from traditional CAD systems into VR, and have

also assessed the suitability of different approaches to

the creation of VR models for different situations.

The potential usefulness of VR packages for

industrial and business applications is limited by their

incapacity to support manipulation of specialist

information. They have inadequate facilities for both

internal information management and data exchange

with other packages [2]. Within building design tools,

construction industry data is ordered in a complex and

domain specific manner. Support is required for this

information in VR, but the generic nature of VR

packages cannot retain the complex semantics and

syntax of such industrial information. The utility of

VR for consensus building between different parties

within the iterative process of building design and

visualization cannot be realised without adequate

information management. Experimentation was

undertaken to ascertain an effective method that

housing developers could use to create and optimise

VR models. The ability to use VR to rapidly create

and evaluate proposed developments, in order to

assess the appropriate usage of different house types

was seen as important. It was agreed that a library of

these standard house types, with their associated

levels of detail and optimisations could potentially

be built up. The advantage of this approach is that the

speed with which a mock up street layout of any

prospective site could be produced is much greater,

once the library has been created.

Three different models of a housing scheme have

been produced, using different modelling techniques.

Fig. 3. VR model showing a standard house type.

Fig. 5. The VR Model shown in a web-browser, information abou

different house types can be linked to the model, and animations can

also be shown.

The first model was built in the commercial VR

package Superscape (Fig. 3), and consists of one

house type in different positions in the street layout.

The second was built from CAD data of the house

type translated into the Virtual Reality Modelling

Language (VRML) and assembled in an authoring

tool (Fig. 4). The third model was built in 3D in the

AutoCAD environment and then exported to 3D

Studio VIZ, where it was structured hierarchically

and further edited before being translated into VRML

(Fig. 5). The VRML site model (Fig. 5) is not as

refined as the initial house type models, and just

shows the general layout of the site. The type of

modeling technique is usually dictated by the level of

t

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295292

detail required, the first one being suitable for single

house types for walk-through purposes, while the

second and third techniques are used to show street

layouts and hence requiring less detail on the

individual house models.

However these models demonstrate the potential

for the project to be accessed through a browser, (Fig.

5) either remotely, or on the local computer. In such a

distributed use, bandwidth considerations lead to the

necessity to seek a compromise between model detail

and speed of navigation within the model. Technical

data or photographic marketing images can also be

displayed when the user enquires about relevant parts

of the housing scheme from within the virtual

environment using hotspots.

Consultation with housing developers identified a

number of areas where VR could potentially achieve

benefits, these include: marketing to show finished

development to prospective buyers, planning consul-

tations to facilitate the process of obtaining planning

consents, and finally design development especially

for site layouts (Fig. 6).

3.3. Towards visualisation support for site-level

operations

The aim of this project was to develop a visual-

isation and communication environment (VISCON)

that would assist design teams in communicating and

visualising design details that may be problematic to

construction teams.

The prototype system is Web-based to facilitate use

by geographically distributed project teams. This

enables all the participants in design and construction

of a project to access the project drawings, illustra-

Fig. 6. VR Model assembled in a Generic VR Tool, u

tions and documents from anywhere inside the office

or on site. AutoCAD, Architectural Desk Top, 3D

studio, and VRML have been used for the develop-

ment of the prototype system. Using the VISCON

system, the user can manipulate and display any

design or graphical information from any location

with internet access.

The VISCON architecture has been developed to

make use of existing visualization tools to clarify and

communicate buildability information (Fig. 7). The

architecture forms a closed and interactive loop that

includes designers, the system, and the site team. The

data flow, which is represented by an arrow, depicts

the fact that data moves from one process to another.

The prototype system architecture helps the design

team to choose which type of visualisation is

appropriate for which part of the building with

potential difficulties on site.

The VISCON system consists of three main layers.

The first layer of the VISCON system is where the 3D

models are created from the 2D drawings and textual

information using a 3D CAD modelling tools. Each

3D object can be created using one or more 3D

modeling techniques such as solid modelling or wire

frame techniques. When creating 3D models, each

method has its own advantages and disadvantages. It

is necessary to identify at the outset the best method to

use for a specific component of a building or for the

building as a whole. The decision on what type of

visualization should be produced depends on the

information to be presented. It also depends on the

particular project and its constraints as well as on the

way of working. If the visualization aim is, for

example, to show how components can be assembled,

the best visualization method to use is 3-D animation.

sing CAD house type data, and site layout data.

Fig. 8. VRML model for cladding showing the interface between different building components.

Fig. 7. VISCON system architecture.

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295 293

D. Bouchlaghem et al. / Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 287–295294

To view the final product, it is best to use a VRML

model, which can be manipulated and viewed from

different angles and sides.

Rendered images are useful for visualizing materi-

als and their appearance. This enables users to decide

on the best materials from an aesthetic point of view.

VISCON also offers other visualization systems

currently available (such as VR proprietary software)

and is flexible enough to incorporate other systems

that will be available in future.

The models created within the system (see example

in Fig. 8) can be linked to the main CAD drawing.

Rendered drawings, 3D animations and VRML

models can be hyperlinked to a 2-D plan of the

proposed building or structure so that it can be viewed

or downloaded.

The second layer of the system consists of the

communication infrastructure including site video

links using tools such as NetMeeting, and collabo-

rative support systems such as BSCW (Basic Support

for Collaborative Working). The third layer or client

layer provides external and remote access to the

system.

4. Conclusions

The paper presented a review of visualization

applications in the AEC sector followed by three case

study projects where various technologies have been

applied to different stages of design and construction.

This highlighted ways in which visualization can

assist AEC professionals improve aspects of their

work. During conceptual design visualization can help

designers work collaboratively and communicate

ideas more efficiently. In housing development, site

layout models can be used as a marketing tool with

clients or for planning consultations with planners, at

the same time it can improve the way house type

designs are developed by design teams. It has also

been shown in the last case study that visualization

can bridge the gap between designers and site teams

in facilitating the exchange of information for build-

ability problems. Visualization applications are

becoming more readily available and accessible to

construction professionals due to the continuous

decreasing cost of software and hardware. Some

leading construction firms have invested large resour-

ces for the use of visualization in house realizing its

business benefits. Some of these companies are using

advanced tools for the creation of walkthrough models

of new developments to communicate concepts to

clients, or to check the integrity of designs in terms of

clash detection between the services and the structure.

Implementation problems of these new technologies

have always been the main barrier in adopting them,

however while in the past the main problem was cost,

it is now more organizational and human issues that

stand in the way of taking full advantage of the

benefits that can be realized. This is now being seen as

the next challenge in this area of research where both

academics and practitioners are realizing that success-

ful adoption of new technologies depends on careful

consideration of organizational and business issues.

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