Industrialized building renovation: Manufacturing through a constraint-based on-line support system

We present the coupling of two constraint-based environments into an on-line support system for facade-layout configuration in the context of building renovation. The configuration consists on the definition and allocation of a set of rectangular parameterization panels over a facade surface. The coupling allows solving two configuration tasks: To configure a set of questions relating the renovation model needed to determine limits for panels´ size and panels´ weight and to configure a constraint satisfaction model for each of the facades to renovate. Two constraint-based systems handle the filtering of incompatible values and the generation of layout plans in a web-service setup. The first service performs initial filtering to set panels´ limits, based on the questionnaire, using a constraint filtering engine called CoFiADe. The second service uses several facade-layout configuration algorithms, using as underlying engine the constraint solver Choco, to generate compliant layout-plan solutions. We show that by dividing filtering and search, and by coupling the two constraint-based systems, we gain modularity and efficiently as each service focuses on their own strengths.