| Due to the increase in demand of energy efficient and durable buildings, design of building envelope sub-system is an important focus area in the building design process, especially in cold climate countries like Canada. The envelope is a major part of the building cost and is expected to last 30, 50, even 100 years.;The objective of this research is to model the building envelope design process and conceptualize a computer tool that could support the designers during the building envelop design process. It develops a concept for an integrated tool through a comprehensive study to understand the available design methods and their knowledge: by defining a generic model that could represent the design methods studied and their corresponding knowledge bases; subsequently, by defining a concept of the design tool with functions suiting the design process; and finally, translating some of the functions into a program to test, resulting in a prototype. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
