Supporting design collaboration using agent-based 3D virtual environments

A successful building project depends on the collective creativity of a multidisciplinary team of architecture, engineering, construction, management and many other domain experts. 3D virtual environments facilitate a level of communication and collaboration not readily available in conventional computer-aided design (CAD) systems. The integration of 3D virtual environments and CAD systems using a common data model can make a significant impact on synchronous collaboration and real time multi-user multi-disciplinary modification of building data. By using computational agents, the integration of 3D virtual environments and CAD systems can go beyond that of passive data transfer. With sensors and effectors, each agent can interact with its environment by responding to changes in the CAD system or the 3D virtual environment, which can be as simple as an update to the geometry, or as complex as a recommendation to modify non geometric information or to propagate changes to other parts of the design. The reasoning process for each agent can vary from a reflexive behaviour in which the agent responds directly to the sensor data to a reflective behaviour in which the agents reasons about its goals and alternatives before making a change to the environment. With appropriate levels of interventions from the human designers, agent-based 3D virtual environments are autonomous and capable of self organising and reasoning to provide decision support during the design collaboration. The proposed agent framework can also serve as a foundation upon which current reasoning components can be modified and subsequent reasoning components can be added to accommodate new factors that emerge during the collaboration.