A working prototype of distributed collaborative architectural design system

This dissertation outlines a working prototype which suggests a distributed Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) system to promote a new model of collaborative design. Until recently, the use of computers in the profession of architecture has grown with the power of easy data management, increased sophistication of stand-alone applications, inexpensive hardware, improved speed of processing, use of standard library and tools for communication and collaboration. The computing resources of an organization or project team were often spread across many different platforms and in different locations. Recently, there has been a growing interest in distributed CAAD integration due to the needs of direct collaboration among project participants. The potential for the integration of information is expected to have a tremendous impact on architecture and the construction industry.; The aim of this research is to provide a new paradigm for a CAAD system by combining research on integrated CAAD applications with recent collaboration technologies. Interactive three-dimensional (3D) design tools and applications running on the Web have been developed for an Internet-based distributed CAAD application system, specifically designed to meet the requirements of the architectural design process.; To accomplish this research objective, information models of urban and architectural components have been structured to meet the requirement of system integration. The proposed system has been designed and a prototype implemented to produce enough guidelines to foster interest in the development of future CAAD systems on the Internet. To this end, two different scopes of implementation are evaluated: first, global architecture and the functionality of a distributed CAAD system; and, second, the association of an architectural application to the system.; By using the features of a distributed computing framework, an efficiently integrated CAAD application system was built on the Internet, and it was possible to evaluate practical levels of system implementation and functionality to draw potential uses and collaborative tasks in the architectural industry.