TAD,OOPS and Tangent - Tangent designs 'architect's desktop'
archsfa.com
archsfa.com
V. Rishi Kumar (bl)
HYDERABAD, Nov. 15
TANGENT Software, a division of architects Sabu Francis & Associates, has developed what its describes as TAD _"The Architect's Desktop," a true AI-based OOP software written in Prolog. It provides all the necessary tools needed to design and manage projects for architects, the company says.
The Director of Tangent Software, Mr. Sabu Francis, an expert in artificial intelligence and object-oriented programming (OOP), told Business Line that TAD provides all the necessary tools to create extrusions from any plane using the ground plane editor feature, create sophisticated and complex 3-D designs and at the same time work on design orthographically.
"This software also facilitates the user to add materials to enrich objects. The materials can be applied on the relevant surface. More importantly, TAD has the capability to read building material information from a central database and use it directly as the architect creates the design. This information can include technical as well as economic information and can be constantly updated by conventional methods," he said.
Mr. Francis said the value of the software can be judged by the fact that architectural firms have designed and constructed over 30 lakh sq. feet of constructed space using the software.
The software was also used by a research team headed by Dr. J.K. Nayak of the Indian Institute of Technology, Powaii for a Central Government project to assess the effects of climate on buildings. This team has undertaken another research project for developing specific extensions to the software, he said.
Much of the major research that is being carried out in the world is driven because of the need to improve architectural practice in different regions, Mr. Francis said. Combine-2, a research team of the European Union, is one such specific effort to promote EU interests, he observed.
Mr. Francis said that despite rapid strides in software development, there is no CAD software that is 100 per cent complete. The multiple requirements for architects makes it that much more complex for a single software to provide all the solutions. TAD is an approach to make the software an all- encompassing utility.
Describing this software as that which helps 'build castles in the air,' Mr. Francis said that the software, which uses artificial intelligence and object-oriented programming, is superior to conventional methods of CAD.
Unhappy with the existing convectional tools, Mr. Francis translated his research work entitled "A taxonomy for architecture" into virtual reality by designing TAD. Later, he also designed ARDELA (ARchitecture DEsign LAnguage), an AI language, a variation of Prolog.
As most of the traditional programmes store information in databases, Mr. Francis said it was difficult for architects to introduce new information into the systems. Therefore, one had to go in for segmentation of databases.
The TAD software, which uses a three-dimensional model, helps in actually creating environments and simultaneously helps in managing several complex calculations. And this is achieved by deploying object-oriented programming systems (OOPS).
The software comprises three modules - TAD designer, TAD Documenter and TAD Net. As against the conventional system which emphasises on drawings, TAD is a software structured model of building proposed structure. While helping out in several tasks including generating wire-frame models, this can be adopted to evaluate even acoustic systems and be used as a geographical information system . |
