A computer-implemented automated
building design and modeling and construction project cost estimating and
scheduling system (“DMES
system”) is described. The DMES
system provides a central source for all of the design and construction information for a construction project in a coordinated two-dimensional and three-dimensional
spatial database that is freely accessible by all of the members of an interdisciplinary construction
project team as a means to produce automatically coordinated design development and construction document information. The DMES
system acquires and stores all of the appropriate design,
engineering, and construction expertise and information available for any building type for use in automatically assembling and coordinating the design, cost-estimating, and scheduling for a construction project. In one embodiment, the DMES system consists of a plurality of objects, comprising elements and massing elements arranged in an
assembly hierarchy. Each of the objects includes
programming code that defines an interface and discrete internal functions that define its behavior. When instantiated in the
database, the objects automatically create further instances of other objects in the hierarchy, which in turn do the same, thus assembling a complete
building model automatically from the initial manually-placed instance. The
building model enables automatic generation of drawings and cost and scheduling information. By running automatic iterations of the
building model, multiple designs may be evaluated to determine the optimum design.