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A. Mahdavi:
"A Middle Way to Integration";
in: "Proceedings of the 4th Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning Conference", Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning Conference, Maastricht, 1998.

Integration in computer-aided design denotes systematic incorporation of multiple domain applications within a unified computational design support environment. At one end of the spectrum of integration efforts, there is a top-down approach involving an all-encompassing maximal building representation. On the other end, there is bottom-up approach involving the ad hoc and as-needed production of translator and mediator routines to enable various existing applications to communicate with each other. This paper describes the development of a design support system which represents a middle way to integration: while it assumes that, at a fundamental level, some shared notation of the constitutive building entities and their spatial relationships in sine qua non, it assumes that this notation is not a primary necessity, but must be tested against the requirements of the "down-the-line" manipulators of the entities encapsulated by it.