Title: Management system for a Virtual Cooperative Project
Abstract: The paper presents on-going research aimed at the support of the management of building projects and the aid cooperative design.Today, The use of systems adapted to the cooperative design assistance for the building domain is complex.This results from the complexity of the cooperative work (difficulties in tracking actor's work, lack of most of the required information, coordination problems, implicit nature of most of the construction activities etc.)The paper will briefly review two data exchanging modes that we had defined.After, on the basis of this concept of cooperative design we describe a new model of a virtual environment aimed to takes into account the relational organization of the project and the semantic meaning of works.This research represents a new approach because it not based on management of documents but on all data relative to works.Finally, we use this new model for defining a design-aided tool, to deduce advantages and limits of the "Virtual Cooperative Project".This system lets geographically dispersed project actors model the project context of a building.More specifically, it allows interpreting, using and exchanging project works in a centralized virtual environment during the building life cycle.This system uses IFC objects which associate in the same model the semantic and the 3D representation of building works.