Space-centred information management approach to improve CAD-based healthcare building design

Abstract

This study focuses on developing a space-centred CAD tool to enable designers to effectivelymanage and implement the information of design guidance information and user requirements during designprocesses, especially for the stages of design briefing and conceptual design. It aims to structure and storedesign guidance and user requirements for healthcare building design into a relational database, and link themto relevant space entities in design plans. The tool is developed on the platform of Autodesk ArchitectureDesktop (ADT). It also enables users to store and retrieve pictures associated with textual information, becausepictures have been always used by designers as an effective medium to represent and deliver design informationand knowledge. This can give users directly visual and more understandable perceptions of the design guidance.The tool is fully embedded with Autodesk AutoCAD systems to ensure the application of this tool being fullymerged with CAD-based design process. A set of design guidance about Alzheimer clinic built environments areadopted as a sample to demonstrate and validate the tool. Moreover, the scenario of expanding this applicationto more broad areas has also been foreseen