Computer aided facilities design: An international survey.

A wide variety of computer programmes for solving facilities design problems have been developed. Since the arrival of programmes like CORELAP and CRAFT in the early sixties, a variety of aspects of this problem have been approached using computer technology. Engineers and architects appear to be the developers and users of most of these programmes. This paper describes the results of a survey attempting to summarize this activity both in Europe and North America where most of the work is being conducted. Computers are being used for both data reduction and graphics associated with the design of buildings which range from industrial plants to hospitals and schools. It is apparent that computers are being used as design aids although few practitioners are willing to delegate the whole job to a computer at this time. Both time shared programmes and the more conventional batch processing are summarized. Heuristics include algorithms which vary in philosophy. The advantages and limitations to construction algorithms, improvement algorithms, vector analysis and graph theory are discussed. A catalogue of these programmes including sources for further information is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]