Towards collaborative creative design

Ž .Automation in Construction 10 2001 607–616www.elsevier.comrlocaterautcon

Towards collaborative creative design

Adam Borkowski a,), Cherif Branki b, Ewa Grabska c, Wojciech Palacz c

a Institute of Fundamental Technological Problems, PAS, Swietokrzyska 21, PL-00-049 Warsaw, Polandb UniÕersity of Paisley, Scotland, UK

c Institute of Computer Science, Jagiellonian UniÕersity, Poland

Abstract

The paper presents a design support system for collaborative work based upon the composite knowledge representation. Itaddresses the main challenges of distributed environment: ensuring a convenient access to the common data by multipleusers and maintaining consistency of such data. The main idea is to couple the design support system implemented inCrCqq with the knowledge database using the ODBC library developed by the Microsoft. The ability of the proposedsystem is demonstrated on several examples. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Creative design; Design support system; Database

1. Introduction

The terms Collaborative Design, Concurrent De-sign, Virtual Atelier became quite popular recently.They express the belief that Engineering in generaland Engineering Design in particular should benefitfrom the fact that computer became a node ofwidespread communication network.

Usually, the following advantages of network-based environment are pointed out with respect toEngineering Design:

1. Projects can be completed in a shorter time due toparallel treatment of subtasks,

2. Collaboration between members of the designteam representing different disciplines improves.

) Corresponding author. Tel.: q48-22-826-1281; fax: q48-22-826-9815.

Ž .E-mail address: [email protected] A. Borkowski .

Costs of running large projects can be diminisheddue to teleconferencing facilities.

Given the plenitude of Internet-oriented tools thatare available nowadays on the software market, es-tablishing a mere communication between membersof the design team is straightforward. The real chal-lenge can be put in the form of two questions:

1. How data about the project are to be organisedand made conveniently available to each partici-pant of the design process?

2. How the consistency of such a database is to bemaintained?

The first question is related to the standardisationŽand much has been done already in this area com-

w x.pare 5,12 . The standard STEP developed by theISO constitutes the kernel around, which many par-ticular proposals are centered.

0926-5805r01r$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Ž .PII: S0926-5805 00 00070-4

( )A. Borkowski et al.rAutomation in Construction 10 2001 607–616608

The second question concerns the authorisation ofchanges in the database and the resolution of in-evitable conflicts between co-operating specialists.The more ambitious proposals aim at the coverage of

w xcomplete CIM-cycle 11 . Treating participants of theŽdesign process as co-operating intelligent agents both

.human and software-based leads to fascinating andw xrapidly expanding research area 9,14 .

It should be pointed out that the problems pre-sented above are not considered here, except that wesketch some aspects of collaboration over networks.We concentrate our attention on the creativity aspectof the collaborative design which, in our opinion,depends on appropriate general attitude to the designitself. In this paper, a new model of collaboration forcreative design is proposed. We shall use the existingdesign system, based on the syntactic–semantic rep-

Ž .resentation, called Composite Representation CR ,w xand we shall adapt it for collaborative work 7 .

Ž .Design System with CR DSCR is particularly suitedfor creative design in Engineering, because it allowsthe user to consider topological properties of thedesigned object prior to determining details of itsgeometry.

A kernel of the design system was implementedŽ .as the code Programmed Graph Grammar PGG

developed in 1997 at the Institute of Computer Sci-ence in Cracow. This program is written in Cqqand runs on a PC under Windows ’95.

As it has been already mentioned, for collabora-tion we need mechanisms that allow the designers toexchange information on the running project, to con-duct discussions and to negotiate conflicts that ariseduring subsequent design phases.

Instead of developing new tools, we will takeadvantage of existing solutions, which are compati-

Žble with PGG implementation CrCqq and Win-.dows . Our suggestion is to employ Design Knowl-

Ž .edge Storage Server DKSS , i.e. a database serveracting as the central data warehouse, which stores allinformation used by designers. Computers runningCAD applications will connect with DKSS usingODBC library. ODBC stands for the Open DataBaseConnectivity. It is a set of programming librariesdeveloped by Microsoft for its operating systemWindows 3.1r95rNT. ODBC provides Windowsapplications with functions for accessing databaseservers. So far, ODBC was mainly used for develop-

ment of front–end applications in banking and man-agement.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2sketches some problems of collaboration over net-work. In Section 3, we deal with design systemsutilizing ODBC. Section 4 presents our proposal ofthe design support system adequate for collaborativedesign. Section 5 contains conclusions.

2. Collaboration over network

A traditional design office is organised in a hier-archical way and operates sequentially: a single per-son responsible for a particular project prepares itsoutline and assigns the development of specific as-pects to subordinate specialists of specialised teams.Each specialist deals with a segment of the projectand addresses his postulates and wishes to otherspecialists. The drawback of such a practice is thatthe project must be periodically discussed at themeetings of the entire design team where conflictsare resolved and the commonly agreed solutions arefound.

The situation gets worse if the manufacturer ofthe product is excluded from the design process.Having obtained the documentation such a manufac-turer often demands changes, which result from tech-nological, economical or market-study-based consid-erations. Sometimes even the investor changes hismind and postulates additional functionality or otherchanges of the artefact. This leads to costly modifica-tions of the design and to delays in the completion ofthe project. Typically, some drawbacks come outduring the exploitation of the object, which needsthen to be improved or refurbished. Having in mindsuch deficiencies of the traditional approach, onetends contemporary to integrate the entire life cycleof the object into a single computer-controlled pro-cess. Such a concept has been already introduced inAerospace Industry where it led to substantial in-crease in efficiency of the design phase, to theimproved quality of the product and to the lowermaintenance costs. The next step consists in turningsequential design into a parallel process where par-ticular specialists negotiate on fly their requirements.Due to contemporary wide bandwidth of the commu-nication network, the agents taking part in negotia-

( )A. Borkowski et al.rAutomation in Construction 10 2001 607–616 609

tions need not to meet physically. The major con-flicts are resolved during periodically organised tele-conferences and the minor ones are resolved bilater-ally due to the exchange of project data between allinvolved persons.

Fig. 1 shows the structure of Intranet-based vir-tual design office. Note that the nodes of such anetwork can be located at large distance, a specialistmay be also a subcontractor and the search forexternal suppliers can be done in the public Internet.On the other hand, no serious firm will use Internetfor transmitting proprietary data on designed objects.

Secured by firewall against hostile intruders, thejunction to Internet allows to speed up the search forcomponents. Some commercial CAD-systems allowalready to prepare the so-called actiÕe drawings, i.e.the drawings able to absorb parts found in theWWW-pages. The browser integrated into such asystem contains engineering links, for example theURLs of suppliers of bearings, hydraulic componentsor control valves. Having chosen the producer, thedesigner can immediately browse through its catalogand paste into the current design a part described asan intelligent object. Such an object contains notonly the rules that adjust it geometrically to thedrawing but also it contains the complete description

Ž .of the part its nominal load, weight, cost, etc. .These data are automatically included into the pro-ject database and can be retrieved any time. Exam-ples of the utilisation of this new technology can be

w xfound in Ref. 1 .w xIt is obvious that Virtual Atelier 6 or Virtual

Design Office require specialised software. It mustallow the user to represent design in object-orientedmanner, to assist him in finding and resolving con-flicts, to enable efficient and transparent coding and

Fig. 1. Collaboration via computer network.

Fig. 2. Collaboration of human designer with Internet-based agents.

administration of different versions of the currentproject. Many universities in the USA are involved

Žin prototyping this kind of software compare thew xMIT-effort described in Ref. 13 and the projects

w x.running at the Standford University 4,10 .The automobile industry in the States is also very

active in modernising the process of design. Theso-called Design for Manufacture and Assembly

w xProgram 2 developed by Chrysler turned out to besuccess. It allowed the firm to reduce considerablythe development of Neon car assuring at the sametime its low price and high quality.

The further development of the concept of intelli-gent objects leads us to intelligent agents — soft-ware tools residing in the network and providingcertain services. Such agents are usually imple-mented in Java — a specialised language forWWW-applications. Fig. 2 shows futuristic pictureof a human designer collaborating in the networkwith software-based intelligent agents. In the bestcase, it could be even hard to tell whether the partneris human or artificial.

Completely different aspects of collaborative de-sign can be handled by means of the design system,adapted for collaborative work with use of the ODBClibrary, proposed in the following sections. In Sec-tion 3, possibility and usefulness of ODBC in prob-lems of collaborate design will be considered.

3. Design system and ODBC

Different database systems use many models ofdata organization, but the relational model is the

w xmost commonly used 3 , as it is fairly universal andhas status of an unofficial standard. We assume that


the database server acting as DKSS is a relationaldatabase server. Knowledge stored in a relationaldatabase is hierarchically organized. On the top level,there are tables; tables consist of rows, rows offields; fields hold pieces of data, like number, stringof characters or date. All rows in the given tablehave identical set of fields. Every field has a type,which determines kind of data that can be stored inthis field: numerical, alphanumerical, and boolean.Most database servers support also notion of Binary

Ž .Large OBject BLOB fields, where arbitrary data ofany length can be stored and retrieved as an array ofbytes.

The ODBC library allows Microsoft Windowsapplications to connect with relational databaseserver, and then manipulate data stored on this server.This includes creating and deleting tables, adding orremoving rows, storing, retrieving and altering datain fields.

In order to adapt existing design system imple-mentation for the collaborative work, we need to addcode, which interfaces with DKSS. Design data willbe stored and retrieved from DKSS, making it avail-able to all members of the design team.

In general, a design system implementation savesand loads data from local hard disk. For the Collabo-

Ž .rative Design System Implementation CDSI , wepropose to store and retrieve data from DKSS. Forthis purpose, a table named PROJECTS is used.

Files on local disks have two properties: nameand contents. So, each row in the PROJECTS tablehas also two fields that corresponds to these proper-ties and hold appropriate data. When designer saveshis project to a new row in the PROJECTS table, itimmediately becomes available to all team members.

Of course, other fields can be introduced asneeded. We think that at least designer name, date ofsaving and some sort of AmemoB field can be useful,

Fig. 3.


and should be stored along with the filename and thecontents. We would like to point out that the databasetable can have multiple rows with the same filename,and thus can hold several versions of the givenproject. Analysing all these rows, we can reconstructhistory of a particular project: who made the firstdraft, who and when made changes, and for what

Žreason providing that designers documented these.reasons in memos associated with each row . This

probably can be quite useful feature.The implementation of changes required for oper-

ation depicted above should be fairly simple, and itshould be concentrated in the section of code respon-sible for loadrsave functions.

In order to allow the running project to be modi-fied by several designers, more radical changes arerequired. In the stand-alone mode of operation, CDSIkeeps the working copy of project in the memory,the designer modifies this working copy, and whenhe is done saves the project. Only then other design-ers can see changes he made. In order to allow other

members of the team to see changes as they arebeing made, a working copy of the project must belocated not in the memory, but on some sort ofblackboard, shared by all instances of CDSI runningconcurrently on designers’ computers. Since we aresaving projects in the PROJECTS table anyway, aspecially designated row in this table can serve as ablackboard. When switched into cooperative editingmode, CDSI fetches periodically contents of theblackboard and visualizes them on the screen. If oneof the designers makes changes to the working copy,others will see them after next refresh. To ensuresmooth operation, the refreshing must be done fre-quently and this is rather time-consuming. So, CDSIshould be able to work in the following two modes:cooperative editing and stand-alone editing. The lat-ter mode is a default mode, on the contrary thecooperative editing is activated only on designer’sdemand.

If two designers try to modify the blackboardsimultaneously, results could be unpredictable. To

Fig. 4.


Fig. 5.


ensure consistency of the working copy, data lockinghas to be employed. When designer begins an actionthat would result in modification of the blackboard,CDSI attempts to lock the blackboard. If the lockingsucceeds, the designer is allowed to actually performmodifying action; upon its completion, the black-board is updated and unlocked. This excludes possi-bility of conflict, as only one instance of CDSI canlock the blackboard at a time.

Finally, there is a matter of communication sub-system. It should allow the system to pass messagesbetween team members, and to hold on-line confer-ences. Instead of embedding necessary code intoCDSI, we would suggest employing one of manyexisting programs for network conferencing. MSWindows operating systems allow multiple applica-tion to run concurrently, so the designer can startboth the CDSI and the conferencing program, posi-tion their windows alongside and switch betweenthem as needed.

As example, let us introduce Internet Relay ChatŽ . ŽIRC , which allows to talk or rather, write to each

.other in chat groups, moderate these discussions,and also transfer files between chat participants. Ofcourse, rather than using public network of InternetIRC servers, designer team should utilize its privateIRC server to prevent uninvited guests from joining.What is important, many implementations of IRCserver and client software are available for free. Ifthere is demand for more multimedially orientedsolution, many computer vendors offer audio-and-video conference applications. This, however, re-

Žquires expensive hardware sound cards, video cam-.eras and high speed network connections to work

properly.Concluding this section, it is worth noticing that

helpfulness of ODBC in problems of collaborativedesign depends also on an approach to design. Sec-tion 4 presents our proposition of such an approachto creative design.

Fig. 6.


4. Collaborative creative design

Many problems solved in CAD have led develop-Ž .ers of computer-assistance tools software to see

new challenges around computer support in design.Giving the designer a chance for creative work withthe help of a computer is one of them.

On one hand, creative design is based on individ-ual skills. On the other hand, design is in its essence,collaborative. What makes Collaborative Creative

Ž .Design CCD interesting is:

v its competition with individual innovations be-tween designers,

v possibility of designing components of artefactŽ .design object by different designers, and educa-tional aspects.

CCD needs an appropriate formal model. In ouropinion, Design System based on Composite Repre-

Ž .sentation DSCR meets such requirements. Whenusing DSCR designers begin reasoning about thedesigned objects with the consideration of its func-tion. DSCR is equipped with Functional Graph Edi-tor, which allows them to determine function graphs.After arriving at an understanding on one commonfunction graph, DSCR forces designers to think aboutdesigned objects at two levels: the higher syntacticlevel of structural properties and the lower semanticlevel of geometry and other attributes.

In other words, DSCR suggests designing in twoways: either through changing of object structure or

Ž .through examining primitives basic shapes withtheir geometry and other attributes as color, texture

Fig. 7.


and surface pattern. Separating strictly the followingthree levels of designing:

v description of object function,v object syntax, andv object semantics makes easier introducing modifi-

cations and changes by different designers, andexchanging data.

Designers use the same representation to intro-duce changes at the same level of designing. Eachlevel is characterized by an appropriate representa-tion. Besides a function graph defined at the startinglevel of design, DSCR offers defining an objectstructure by a sequence of graph rules. The structureis defined in the form of a graph derived from thesequence of rules and is generated by Generator ofGraphs. Changing a given graph structure requireschanging graph rules. Therefore, designers use Edi-tor of Graph Rules to introduce structural modifica-tions.

The third level of design consists in determiningŽ .problem oriented interpretation semantics of object

structure. Designers use a domain-dependent Realisa-Ž .tion Block and Browser RBB at this level. Despite

certain differences, RBB forces designers to selectprimitives and a collection of modelling proceduresbased on design criteria.

Let us sketch an example of the design session inw xDSCR for the floor-layout design 8 . Fig. 3 shows

an example of the function graph agreed upon bydesigners.

It is worth noticing that designers can try to seethe function graph at the higher level of hierarchy.For this purpose, they merge appropriate nodes ofthe function graph into supernodes, which are nodesof the graph corresponding to the higher level of

Ž .functional description see Fig. 4 .After the functional graph has been refined, DSCR

generates preliminary graph structures. Examples oftwo productions applied to the generation are pre-sented in Fig. 5.

Example of final solution made by means of RBBis presented in Fig. 6.

When floor-layout is created, another specialistcan begin work on heating system. Again, set of thefunctions heating system should provide has to beprepared, and by means of Functional Graph Editor

function graph is obtained. Then, Generator ofGraphs derives graphs describing potential structuresof the heating system. After acceptance of otherspecialists, the final structure is chosen, and theheating system generated by RBB is fitted into previ-

Ž .ously accepted floor-layout see Fig. 7 .

5. Conclusions

The paper should be seen as an attempt to presentsome aspects of Collaborative Creative Design Sys-tem running under Microsoft Windows with use ofthe ODBC library. We are planning to extend oursystem with Internet-based agents at the level ofDomain-Dependent Realisation Block and Browser.

Our proposition is not confined to programs run-ning under Microsoft Windows. Using stand-alonedatabase server acting as DKSS enables us to de-velop design applications in both different program-ming languages and different programming environ-ments, without losing ability to exchange data be-tween these applications. The only crucial require-ment is an existence of library providing functions

Žfor the accessing database server i.e. existence of a.library equivalent with ODBC .

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Towards collaborative creative design