Design philosophy

Design philosophy

The software tools of this project are meant to facilitate surveys of existing buildings. The idea is to use them (as far as possible) on the field, where results can be controlled directlty. They should therefore be simple and robust. The data can have various origin: total stations, laser scanners, digital photographs, hand measurements... The tools are used to help data collection, data processing and integration to produce accurate models.

The construction of a 3D model is a complex process, involving many steps. Each case is specific and flexibility is necessary. The general idea is to develop sets of programs and modules achieving elementary documentation tasks efficiently. In that way, the "pipeline" of operations can be optimised for a particular documentation problem, in function of the type of building, of the number and type of instruments available and of the number of operators and of their preferences. All operations are monitored [Monitor].

This policy is also beneficial from the point of view of software development.New programs are added as new needs appear (this is how it always worked). Whenever possible, programs are kept relatively small, to ease their maintenance. This also makes the chain robust: if one piece is broken, other programs remain operative and can be used to try to achieve the goal differently.

As modules and program are doing elementary operations, it is important to facilitate their inter-communication to achieve complex tasks.

• [Pipes]

• [Files]

• [Sockets]