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A referential scheme for modeling and identifying spatial attributes of entities in constructed facilities

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Abstract

This paper presents a referential scheme for representing and identifying the spatial extent of physical entities of constructed facilities, such as buildings and offshore structures. Using the basic operations of a non-manifold geometric modeler, a set of high-level algebraic operations is defined. The scheme and its algebra are used for modeling the spatial attributes of a facility entity at two levels: primary and secondary. The primary representation uniquely captures an entity's spatial attributes at the “skeletal” level and is used mainly for identifying discipline-independent topological relationships of that entity with others. Secondary representations, on the other hand, are used to provide an entity's discipline-specific geometric attributes. The topological relationships and geometric attributes of facility entities thus need not be explicitly stored, but can be computed on demand by the underlying non-manifold modeler.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Production Computing Division, Exxon Production Research Company, Houston, Texas, USA

    M. Kiumarse Zamanian

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Steven J. Fenves

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  1. M. Kiumarse Zamanian
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  2. Steven J. Fenves
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Zamanian, M.K., Fenves, S.J. A referential scheme for modeling and identifying spatial attributes of entities in constructed facilities. Research in Engineering Design 6, 142–168 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01607276

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