6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

There is also considerable interest in agent-based approaches for
computer supported communication and negotiation in the AEC
industry. An agent embodies particular functionality and behaves in an
autonomous manner. Agents conduct tasks such as gathering
information, communicating with one another as well as planning,
scheduling and executing tasks. In a collaborative design context,
individual agents may be responsible for either the design of
subsystems, or for performing specific design tasks such as
performance analysis, cost analysis, and optimization (Veeramani et al.,
1998; Pena-Mora et al., 2000).
Negotiation-based approaches to design collaboration often make use
of constraint satisfaction techniques to approximate the space of
alternative solutions (Lottaz, 2000; Peng, 1999). Instead of negotiating
over single values for parameters (which often creates artificial
conflicts), constraint satisfaction techniques offer the possibility to
calculate, represent, and manipulate solution spaces. The specification
of project requirements using mathematical expressions makes explicit
information that may be invisible at first glance. In this way, conflicts can
be detected easily and causal links can be deduced from the structure
of the constraint satisfaction problem (Lottaz, 2000).
2.2.3 Information Modeling Approach
Building design is largely considered as an “information processing”
activity after the pioneering work of Akın (1989). The principal
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