Bridging the gap in constraint-based design

Mass customization is one of the most promising computational developments in the AEC industry. Despite recent advances in the production of research-based knowledge, the professional practices lack of a consistent and permanent technology adoption scheme and remain as a very resilient and fragmented industry. This work is a part of an ongoing research project developing guidelines for improving both physical and virtual modeling processes within an architectural design context. Here, we present a customizable model of a space layout explorer. The implementation of the user-driven solution-finding process is based on constraint technology embedded in Autodesk’s Revit® 2011 macros tools, commonly used in the professional practice. The aim of this work is to demonstrate a practical use of a small constraint-based system on software of widespread use. Even though there is still a lack of building information, the model has already several applications in the definition a floor plan layout and in the comparison of several instances of the design solution in the 3D user view. User-driven modifications are not made directly through the 3D model, but through different explicit text tags that describe each parameter on 2D views - although a real time 3D visualization of the model is also available. The main findings are discussed as guidelines for further research on the end-user involvement on a "creative mass customization" scheme. Also, the implementation of visual aids such as text tags during the customization process can bridge some technical obstacles for the development of interfaces for constraint-based mass customization systems. Before the final discussion, some limitations on the use of this model are described.