Supporting choice and evaluation in preliminary design

This paper describes the theory, methodology and implementation of a knowledge based system for the preliminary design of multi-story buildings. The system is intended to act as an intelligent assistant and embodies some of the design expertise and working principles of experienced civil engineering designers. As an aid to exploratory design, the system proposes only a user-specified number of alternatives at any one time and uses a system of hard and soft constraints to evaluate alternative possibilities. An illustrative example is given and the system is evaluated with respect to its potential use by practicing designers and is compared to some previous design systems in related domains.