Building design services in a distributed architecture

This paper describes a distributed architecture that enables the delivery o f building design services over the Internet. The architecture of an indivi dual service is three tiered. The first tier is a common communication prot ocol interface. The middle tier is the common product model interface. The third tier is the core of the design service. With the standardization of t he first two tiers it is possible to rapidly deploy various design services , both new and legacy applications, which can be easily accessed via the In ternet. As examples of building design services, the prototype implements a project manager service with a companion computer-aided design package, a disabled building code analysis service, and a service that generates and d isplays an accessible path for a wheelchair for a given building design usi ng motion planning and animation techniques.