Supporting dimensional control by information technology

In the building industry, there is a necessity of designing the dimensional control plan before starting construction, for the assurance of the defined dimensional quality. The dimensional control plan provides site personnel with information on, among others, setting out and assembling building components, which can often be done by means of total stations. The complexity of designing such a plan asks for the support of information technology. In this paper, we present the results of an ongoing research project that intends to develop a computer aided system for dimensional control on building sites. We start with reporting a prototype based on AutoCAD, which is able to select positioning points for prefabricated columns. Upon this, we propose to integrate object-oriented product modeling with knowledge based engineering, with some initial results shown.