Process Oscillations



The building process goes through de-formalization and subsequent formalization to cover a wider building process participants domain. The building industry has now been engaged in building formalized digital descriptions (models) for 40 years of the process and particularly of the building itself.

From (Christiansson, 1994, " The K3 Program 1994- . A program for Communication, Classification and Representation of building process knowledge."), (16 pp.)

We (researchers and developers) continue to climb the ladder or mountain of abstractions:
  • Integrating building parts to a Product Model, (1970),
  • User tools perspective. 3D modelling (1975),
  • Cad database integration (1980). Disintegrate physically in networks (1980). Object orientation starts (1985). CIB W78 conference in Lund `Conceptual modelling of buildings' (1988)
  • Integrate mixed representations. Knowledge bases (1990). Integrate networks on services level ISDN (1990), INTERNET accelerates. Process modelling (1990)
  • Connectionist product/process models (2000), everywhere accessible DKN [Dynamic Knowledge Net today World Wide Web] (2000).
    What next?
  • Unlearn, virtual agents, pattern communication, (20XX)."

Communication history:
70s (end) IGES. USA Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (1979)
1983 IGES/PDES. USA Product Data Exchange Specification/using step
ISO/STEP Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data
1988 PDES/STEP General AEC Reference Model
IGES 5.0 only available communication standard

During the last 5 years (i.e. roughly 2 'Internet years') considerable standardization efforts have made progress. The industry now has got the ISO DIS 13567 Layers in CAD (Björk et.al. 1997), Industry Foundation Classes, IFC 1.5.1 (IAI 1998), and the STEP standard, ISO-10303 (ISO 1998).
The industry must also take into consideration other supporting. communication (de facto) standards such as EDIFACT, VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language), PDF (Portable Document Format), QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality), Resource Description Framework, RDF, and eXtensible Markup Language, XML, (RDF 1998). See also (Wahtis?com™ 1999).