A Framework for an Architectural Collaborative Design

The building industry involves a larger number of disciplines, operators and professionals than other industrial processes. Its peculiarity is that the products (building objects) have a number of parts (building elements) that does not differ much from the number of classes into which building objects can be conceptually subdivided. Another important characteristic is that the building industry produces unique products. It was attempted to solve the problem of efficient, user-friendly, and fast information exchange among operators by treating it simply as an exchange of data. But the failure of IGES, CGM, PHIGS confirms that data have different meanings and importance in different contexts. The STandard for Exchange of Product data, ISO 10303 Part 106 BCCM, relating to AEC field, seems to be too complex to be applied to professional studios. Our aim in ArCoDe is to develop a software, which we have called MetaKAAD, able to detect conflicts on the basis of its knowledge (which may be increased by learning from example techniques, Simon, 1984). MetaKAAD operates between the intersection set and the union set of team-i (= actor-i + IA-i).