Collaborative Design in Virtual Environments at Conceptual Stage

Abstract

The conceptual design stage of a construction project has significant consequences on all the stages that follow. This stage involves multi-disciplinary design activities that would benefit from dedicated support from information technology systems. The use of real-time multi-disciplinary collaborative systems supporting design teams is still the subject of much research. The most challenging requirements for such systems are the design of a ’collaborative-aware’ information models, the implementation of concurrency in design, and the management of the design processes and workflow necessary for multi-disciplinary design teams. This chapter outlines the requirements of collaborative systems and briefly describes an experimental collaborative design environmental. It also proposes methodologies for the issues of concurrency and the management of processes. Concurrency of design was done through the automation of the synchronization of a shared information model. The management of design processes was done through controlling access-rights of designers to the shared information model.