TY - JOUR A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Nagl, Manfred T1 - Visual Knowledge Specification for Conceptual Design: Definition and Tool Support N2 - In: Advanced Engineering Informatics. Vol 21, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 67-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2006.10.001 eds. J.C. Kunz, I.F.C. Smith and T. Tomiyama, Elsevier, Seite 1-22 Current CAD tools are not able to support the conceptual design phase, and none of them provides a consistency analysis for sketches produced by architects. This phase is fundamental and crucial for the whole design and construction process of a building. To give architects a better support, we developed a CAD tool for conceptual design and a knowledge specification tool. The knowledge is specific to one class of buildings and it can be reused. Based on a dynamic and domain-specific knowledge ontology, different types of design rules formalize this knowledge in a graph-based form. An expressive visual language provides a user-friendly, human readable representation. Finally, a consistency analysis tool enables conceptual designs to be checked against this formal conceptual knowledge. In this article, we concentrate on the knowledge specification part. For that, we introduce the concepts and usage of a novel visual language and describe its semantics. To demonstrate the usability of our approach, two graph-based visual tools for knowledge specification and conceptual design are explained. KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2007 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Heer, Thomas A1 - Redkowitz, Daniel A1 - Kraft, Bodo T1 - Tool Support for the Integration of Light-Weight Ontologies N2 - Abstract of the authors: In many areas of computer science ontologies become more and more important. The use of ontologies for domain modeling often brings up the issue of ontology integration. The task of merging several ontologies, covering specific subdomains, into one united ontology has to be solved. Many approaches for ontology integration aim at automating the process of ontology alignment. However, a complete automation is not feasible, and user interaction is always required. Nevertheless, most ontology integration tools offer only very limited support for the interactive part of the integration process. In this paper, we present a novel approach for the interactive integration of ontologies. The result of the ontology integration is incrementally updated after each definition of a correspondence between ontology elements. The user is guided through the ontologies to be integrated. By restricting the possible user actions, the integrity of all defined correspondences is ensured by the tool we developed. We evaluated our tool by integrating different regulations concerning building design. KW - Ontologie KW - Knowledge Management KW - Ontology Engineering KW - Information Integration Tools KW - Human Factors Y1 - 2008 SN - 978-3-642-00670-8 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Meyer, Oliver A1 - Nagl, Manfred T1 - Graph technology support for conceptual design in civil engineering N2 - In: Advances in intelligent computing in engineering : proceedings of the 9.International EG-ICE Workshop ; Darmstadt, (01 - 03 August) 2002 / Martina Schnellenbach-Held ... (eds.) . - Düsseldorf: VDI-Verl., 2002 .- Fortschritt-Berichte VDI, Reihe 4, Bauingenieurwesen ; 180 ; S. 1-35 The paper describes a novel way to support conceptual design in civil engineering. The designer uses semantical tools guaranteeing certain internal structures of the design result but also the fulfillment of various constraints. Two different approaches and corresponding tools are discussed: (a) Visually specified tools with automatic code generation to determine a design structure as well as fixing various constraints a design has to obey. These tools are also valuable for design knowledge specialist. (b) Extensions of existing CAD tools to provide semantical knowledge to be used by an architect. It is sketched how these different tools can be combined in the future. The main part of the paper discusses the concepts and realization of two prototypes following the two above approaches. The paper especially discusses that specific graphs and the specification of their structure are useful for both tool realization projects. KW - CAD KW - CAD ; KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2002 SN - 3-18-318004-9 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Nagl, Manfred T1 - Support of Conceptual Design in Civil Engineering by Graph-based Tools N2 - WS GTaD-2003 - The 1st Workshop on Graph Transformations and Design ed Grabska, E., Seite 6-7, Jagiellonian University Krakow. 2 pages KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Nagl, Manfred T1 - Parameterized specification of conceptual design tools in civil engineering N2 - Applications of Graph Transformations with Industrial Relevance Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004, Volume 3062/2004, 90-105, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-25959-6_7 In this paper we discuss how tools for conceptual design in civil engineering can be developed using graph transformation specifications. These tools consist of three parts: (a) for elaborating specific conceptual knowledge (knowledge engineer), (b) for working out conceptual design results (architect), and (c) automatic consistency analyses which guarantee that design results are consistent with the underlying specific conceptual knowledge. For the realization of such tools we use a machinery based on graph transformations. In a traditional PROGRES tool specification the conceptual knowledge for a class of buildings is hard-wired within the specification. This is not appropriate for the experimentation platform approach we present in this paper, as objects and relations for conceptual knowledge are due to many changes, implied by evaluation of their use and corresponding improvements. Therefore, we introduce a parametric specification method with the following characteristics: (1) The underlying specific knowledge for a class of buildings is not fixed. Instead, it is built up as a data base by using the knowledge tools. (2) The specification for the architect tools also does not incorporate specific conceptual knowledge. (3) An incremental checker guarantees whether a design result is consistent with the current state of the underlying conceptual knowledge (data base). KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2004 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kraft, Bodo T1 - Conceptual design tools for civil engineering N2 - Applications of Graph Transformations with Industrial Relevance Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004, Volume 3062/2004, 434-439, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25959-6_33 This paper gives a brief overview of the tools we have developed to support conceptual design in civil engineering. Based on the UPGRADE framework, two applications, one for the knowledge engineer and another for architects allow to store domain specific knowledge and to use this knowledge during conceptual design. Consistency analyses check the design against the defined knowledge and inform the architect if rules are violated. KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2004 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kraft, Bodo T1 - Conceptual design mit ArchiCAD 8 : Forschungsprojekt an der RWTH Aachen N2 - Projektbericht in GraphisoftNews - Architektur und Bauen in einer vernetzten Welt 3/2003 4 Seiten KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - Architektur KW - CAD KW - civil engineering KW - architecture Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kraft, Bodo T1 - LexiCAD Step by Step : Bürogebäude : Erstellen eines Grundrisses mit RoomObjects und LexiCAD N2 - 11 Seiten, 22 Abbildungen 1. Konstruktion des Außenumrisses 2. Festlegung der inneren Räume 3. Einfügen der RoomLinks 4. Wallgenerator KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Architektur KW - CAD KW - architecture Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Nagl, Manfred T1 - Semantic tool support for conceptual design N2 - ITCE-2003 - 4th Joint Symposium on Information Technology in Civil Engineering ed Flood, I., Seite 1-12, ASCE (CD-ROM), Nashville, USA In this paper we discussed graph based tools to support architects during the conceptual design phase. Conceptual Design is defined before constructive design; the used concepts are more abstract. We develop two graph based approaches, a topdown using the graph rewriting system PROGRES and a more industrially oriented approach, where we extend the CAD system ArchiCAD. In both approaches, knowledge can be defined by a knowledge engineer, in the top-down approach in the domain model graph, in the bottom-up approach in the in an XML file. The defined knowledge is used to incrementally check the sketch and to inform the architect about violations of the defined knowledge. Our goal is to discover design error as soon as possible and to support the architect to design buildings with consideration of conceptual knowledge. KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Wilhelms, N. T1 - Interactive distributed knowledge support for conceptual building design N2 - In: Net-distributed Co-operation : Xth International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering, Weimar, June 02 - 04, 2004 ; proceedings / [ed. by Karl Beuke ...] . - Weimar: Bauhaus-Univ. Weimar 2004. - 1. Aufl. . Seite 1-14 ISBN 3-86068-213-X International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering <10, 2004, Weimar> Summary In our project, we develop new tools for the conceptual design phase. During conceptual design, the coarse functionality and organization of a building is more important than a detailed worked out construction. We identify two roles, first the knowledge engineer who is responsible for knowledge definition and maintenance; second the architect who elaborates the conceptual de-sign. The tool for the knowledge engineer is based on graph technology, it is specified using PROGRES and the UPGRADE framework. The tools for the architect are integrated to the in-dustrial CAD tool ArchiCAD. Consistency between knowledge and conceptual design is en-sured by the constraint checker, another extension to ArchiCAD. KW - CAD KW - CAD KW - Bauingenieurwesen KW - CAD KW - civil engineering Y1 - 2004 SN - 3-86068-213-X ER -