AU2013205193A1

AU2013205193A1 - A method and a system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure

Info

Publication number: AU2013205193A1
Application number: AU2013205193A
Authority: AU
Inventors: Andrew DWIGHT
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2013-04-14
Filing date: 2013-04-14
Publication date: 2014-10-30
Also published as: WO2014169351A1

Abstract

Abstract Disclosed herein is a method and a system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure.

Description

1 A METHOD AND A SYSTEM FOR CONFIGURING A THREE DIMENSIONAL DIGITAL MODEL OF A STRUCTURE 5 Technical field The disclosure herein generally relates to a method and a system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure. Background The design of a structure, examples of which include buildings and industrial objects, is 0 generally performed using computer aided design (CAD) software. A user builds a digital model of the structure using the CAD software. Generally, CAD software is operable by a professional with a tertiary qualification gained by many years of learning at great expense. Consequently, there are people who would benefit by using CAD software who are currently unable to. For example, an owner-builder, designer or architect may like to design their building using CAD 5 software. Exploring alternative designs of a structure using CAD software may be slow and laborious. When the user needs to create or modify a component - for example a wall, roof or floor - the user must manually redefine the component's attributes and/or geometry. In existing CAD software known to the applicant, the use of graphical material textures, colour 20 and the like is currently for cosmetic purposes. Regardless of any materials or textures applied inside of existing CAD software the geometry (size and form) will remain unchanged. Summary Disclosed herein is a system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure. The system comprises a receiver arranged to receive component information indicative of 25 a plurality of components of the structure and the relative arrangement of the plurality of components. The receiver is arranged to receive component material information indicative of a material for each of the plurality of components. The component material information is generated by a user selecting a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components. The system comprises a geometry generator arranged to 30 generate geometry information indicating the geometry of each of the plurality of 2 components by applying geometric information to the component information. The geometric information is indicative of a geometric property of the material for each of the plurality of components. In the context of this specification, the meaning of geometry encompasses three 5 dimensionalform. A user may specify material independent values for each of the plurality of components, select the picture of the material for each of the plurality of components, and then have the system determine the geometry of each of the plurality of components. For example, the user may specify the length and height of a wall, and a material - for example bricks of a 0 predetermined size. The system may provide the width of the wall and any related structure dimensions. The user may change the selected materials, by interacting with a dialogue box for example, and the system may re-determine the width without requiring the user to laboriously change width and/or other parameters of the wall and structure. Conceptually, the selected material is applied to the component. In the example of a wall, 5 determining the thickness of the wall and any internal structure, for example wall cavity size. The system may allow the user to quickly generate and modify components within the structure, rather than manually redrawing or altering the structure. In an embodiment, the component information is indicative of material independent 0 dimensions of each of the plurality of components. For example, in the case of a wall, the wall length and height may be material independent dimensions. In an embodiment, the system comprises a graphical human-machine interface. The graphical human machine interface may be arranged to present a plurality of pictures of a plurality of materials to the user for the user to select from the plurality of pictures a picture of the material 25 for each of the plurality of components. The system may comprise a computing system comprising the graphical user interface. An embodiment of the system comprises a server in communication with computing system and/or the graphical human-machine interface. The server may be arranged to control the presentation of the plurality of pictures presented by the human-machine interface. 30 An embodiment of the system comprises a picture controller adjacent to the human machine interface. The computing system may comprise the picture controller. The picture controller 3 may be arranged to control the presentation of the plurality of pictures presented by the human machine interface. In an embodiment, the structure may comprise a building. In an embodiment, the plurality of components comprise at least one of a wall, a roof, a slab, a 5 post, a frame, and a joist, and generally any building component. An embodiment of the system comprises a structure information module. The structure information module may be arranged to use the geometry information to generate information indicative of at least one of: material take off; cost; scheduling information; purchase order information for materials constituting the plurality of components; sustainability information; 0 weight information; life cycle information; maintenance scheduling information; insulation value information; embodied energy information; solar heat gain information; manufacturer information; locality information; thermal properties, fire resistance, acoustic values, molecular structure, and carcinogen information indicative of carcinogens within the structure. The picture of the material for each of the plurality of components may be a representative 5 picture. Disclosed herein is a method for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure. The method comprises receiving component information indicative of a plurality of components of the structure and the relative arrangement of the plurality of components. The method comprises receiving component material information indicative 0 of a material for each of the plurality of components. The component material information is generated by a user selecting a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components. The method comprises generating geometry information indicating the geometry of each of the plurality of components by applying geometric information to the component information. The geometric information is indicative of a geometric property of 25 the material for each of the plurality of components. In an embodiment, the component information is indicative of material independent dimensions of each of the plurality of components. In an embodiment, the step of the user selecting the picture of the material for each of the plurality of components comprises a graphical human-machine interface presenting a 30 plurality of pictures of a plurality of materials to the user. The method may comprise the step of the user using the graphical human-machine interface to select from the plurality of 4 pictures a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components. A server remote of the graphical human-machine interface may control the presentation of at least some of the plurality of pictures. Alternatively, the method may comprise the step of a picture controller adjacent to the human-machine interface controlling the presentations of the 5 plurality of pictures to be presented. In an embodiment, the plurality of components comprise at least one of a wall, a roof, a slab, a post, a frame, and a joist. In an embodiment, the geometric information is indicative of a thickness of at least one of the plurality of components. Alternatively or additionally, the geometric information is 0 indicative of a length of at least one of the plurality of components. Alternatively or additionally, the geometric information is indicative of a length of at least one of the plurality of components. Alternatively or additionally, the geometric information is indicative of an internal configuration of at least one of the plurality of components. Alternatively or additionally, the geometric information is indicative of a pitch of at least 5 one of the plurality of components. An embodiment of the method comprises the step of using the geometry information to generate structure information. The structure information may be indicative of one or more of: material take off; cost; scheduling information; purchase order information for materials constituting the plurality of components; sustainability information; weight information; life cycle information; 0 maintenance scheduling information; insulation value information; embodied energy information; solar heat gain information; manufacturer information; locality information; thermal properties, fire resistance, acoustic values, molecular structure, and carcinogen information indicative of carcinogens within the structure. The picture of the material for each of the plurality of components may be a representative 25 picture. Disclosed herein is processor readable tangible media including program instructions which when executed by a processor causes the processor to perform a method disclosed above. Disclosed herein is a computer program for instructing a processor, which when executed by the processor causes the processor to perform a method disclosed above. 30 Any of the various features of each of the above disclosures, and of the various features of the embodiments described below, can be combined as suitable and desired.

5 Brief description of the figures Embodiments will now be described by way of example only with reference to the accompanying figures in which: Figure 1 shows an embodiment of a system for configuring a three dimensional digital 5 model of a structure. Figure 2 shows a representation of an example structure in the form of a house. Figure 3 shows a flow diagram of an example of a method for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure that may be performed by the system of figure 1. 0 Figure 4 shows another embodiment of the system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure. Figure 5 shows a plan view of a plurality of walls having a relative arrangement. Figure 6 shows a rendering of the walls of figure 5 in plan view after material geometry information has been applied. 5 Figure 7 shows an array of possible walls that can be generated by applying different material geometry information to a line representing a wall. Figure 8 shows a picture of a material. Figure 9 shows a schematic diagram of an example system architecture. Figures 10 and 12 show examples of a data structure tree. 20 Figure 11 shows a screen shot of one example of a material-selection screen. Description of embodiments Figure 1 shows an embodiment of a system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure, the system being generally indicated by the numeral 10. Examples of structures include but are not limited to a wall, a building, and a bus shelter. Figure 2 25 shows a representation of an example structure in the form of a house. Some embodiments of a system for configuring the three dimensional digital model of a structure 10 ("the 6 configuration system") may configure three dimensional digital models of industrial objects, examples of which include but are not limited to a table and a bed. The configuration system 10 is arranged to perform the steps of a method for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure. Figure 3 shows a flow diagram of an 5 embodiment of a method 50 for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure performed by the configuration system 10. The configuration system 10 comprises a receiver 12 arranged to receive component information 14, to perform a step 52 of the method 50. The component information 14 is indicative of a plurality of components of the structure and the relative arrangement of the 0 plurality of components. For example, in one example the structure is a building in the form of a house and the components include walls, a roof, a slab, posts, frames, and joists to form the building. The receiver 12 is also arranged to receive component material information 16 indicative of a material for each of the plurality of components, which is another step 54 of the 5 method 50. Steps 52 and 54 may be combined, performed independently, concurrently, in the reverse order to that indicated in figure 3, or generally have any suitable relationship. In this but not necessarily in every embodiment, the component information 14 and the component material information 16 are generated at a computing system 18 in the form of a personal computer operated by a user. In this embodiment, the computing system 18 is 0 external of the configuration system 10. The computing system 18 is operable by the user 22 to generate the component information 14 and the component material information 16. In this but not necessarily in all embodiments, the component information 14 includes user defined component parameters. In an example, the user may define the length and height of a wall. The width and/or the internal structure of the wall may not be user defined but 25 rather defined by a selected wall material. The generated information is communicated from the computing system 18 to the configuration system 10. The computing system 18 and the configuration system 10 are in communication over a data conduit comprising a wired and/or wireless network, point-to-point connection, or generally any suitable connection. 30 Figure 4 shows another embodiment of the system 10, where parts similar in form and/or function to those of figure 1 are similarly numbered. In the embodiment of figure 4, the configuration system 10 comprises the computing system 18. The receiver 12 and 7 software 20 are part of the computing system. In another embodiment, a personal computer comprises configuration system 10 and computing system 18. In the embodiment of figures 1 and 4, but not necessarily for all embodiments, the component information is indicative of at least one material independent value, for example a 5 dimension, of each of the plurality of components. For example, a length and height of a wall component of the structure may be material independent and user defined. In another example, the area of a roof may be material independent. The component material information 16 is generated by the user 22 selecting a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components. To enable this, the computing system 0 18 has a graphical human-machine interface that includes, for example, a keyboard, computer mouse, and display. A plurality of pictures of a plurality of materials may be presented to the user 22 on the display. For example, the pictures may be photographs and/or drawings of a brick, a length of timber, and a roofing material like a tile, shingle or metal sheet. The plurality of pictures may each be a representative picture of the 5 associated material. The user may then select from the plurality of pictures a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components. The act of selection may take any suitable form. For example, the user 22 may click on a picture using a computer mouse to select it. Alternatively, the user 22 may click on a selection box adjacent to a picture to select it. The pictures may be incorporated into a pull-down menu, the pull-down menu being operable 0 by the user 22 to select one of the incorporated pictures. Figure 11 shows a screen shot of one example of a material-selection screen. Detailed information about the materials - for example dimensions, embodied energy, thermal insulating properties etc, - are generally not entered by the user. The detailed information may be, for example, previously received from tangible computer readable 25 media - for example a CD or a DVD - and/ or an Internet connected data service. In the context of this specification, the meaning of material encompasses a composite material. That is, a material made from two or more constituent materials. For example, a wall material may comprise a clay brick and a render. Another wall material may comprise a single non-structural external layer of masonry - for example brick - backed by an air 30 space, and a structural wood or metal frame. The configuration system 10 comprises a geometry generator 24. The configuration system 10 has information conduits 26 that may be in the form of at least one bus, 8 application programme interface or function call operable for information flow between the geometry generator 24, receiver 12, and other configuration system modules 28, 36 as appropriate. The geometry generator 24 is arranged to generate geometry information indicating the geometry of each of the plurality of components by applying geometric 5 information to the component information. The three dimensional form of each of the plurality of components is thus generated. The geometric information is indicative of a geometric property of the material for each of the plurality of components. For example, a wall of the structure may be indicated within the component information by two points that correspond to opposite ends of the wall. The thickness of the wall is not 0 defined until the user has selected a material for the wall, and the geometry generator 24 applies geometric information for the selected wall material to the component information. The user selected wall material may be brick, in which case the geometry generator 24 generates geometry information for the wall that includes a wall thickness determined using dimension of the brick material which are part of the geometric information. In this 5 way, a brick wall and a plaster wall can be drawn (or otherwise specified by the user 22) in the same manner but produce different results (for example in thickness and in the presence or absence of studs). As this information is retained, information such as the number of bricks or cuts of timber required may be calculated and used for estimation. In another example, the user indicates a plurality of points that define a polygon indicative of 0 a roof area. The pitch of the roof is not defined until the user selects a roof material. For example, the pitch of the roof may be different for user selected slate shingles, clay tiles, and compacted earth. The pitch parameter for the generation of roof geometrical information may, but not necessarily, be limited to one of a maximum, a minimum and absolute pitch value. 25 Figure 5 shows a plan view of a plurality of walls having a relative arrangement. Each wall is a component in a structure in the form of a building. Figure 5 only shows the relative arrangement of the component walls and their length. Figure 6 shows a rendering of the structure in plan view after material geometry information has been applied. In this example, the materials selected for the walls are a brick exterior and a plasterboard 30 interior (step 54). Figure 7 shows an array of possible walls that can be generated by the configuration system 10 by applying different material geometric information to a line representing a wall.

9 Figure 8 shows a representative picture of a material, in this case untreated pine timber. The representative picture may be generally a photo, a drawing, or any suitable representation of the material. It may be an artistic representation, a natural representation, or modified representation. Generally any suitable representation may be 5 used. The representative picture of figure 8 is a modified representation. The material has superimposed on it a visual indication of a quality of the material. In this example, the visual indication includes "Untreated" indicating that the timber is untreated, and "90x35", indicated the width and breadth of the material in millimetres or other units as appropriate. 0 Unlike prior art systems, if a user 22 was to draw a wall with a known brick using software 20, the user does not have to generate the entire geometry of the wall, which requires specifying the thickness of the wall. This eliminates the possibility of the user 22 entering incorrect dimensions of the brick. The system 10 also may reduce or eliminate product research because all of the required information may be already held by the system 10. 5 The geometric information may be subsequently communicated to the computing system 18. The computing system 18 consequently may have a configured digital model of the structure. The computing system 18 may subsequently render the digital model on the display for the user 22 to view. The system 10 may comprise a server 28, shown in dashed outline to indicate that it is optional. 0 The server is, when included, in communication with the computing system 18. The server 28 includes server memory 30 having picture information indicative of the plurality of pictures. The memory also may hold the geometric information and any other information used by the configuration system 10. The server may be arranged to control the presentation of the plurality of pictures presented by the human-machine interface. For example, the computing system may 25 be configured to acquire pictures of available materials from the server 28. The server 28 may respond by providing figures of materials that for which prior arrangements have been made with a material supplier, or for which it is known is currently available. The server 28 may comprise material supply information indicative of such an arrangement. Alternatively, the server may only provide figures for materials that satisfy a user 22 indicated price condition. 30 Alternatively, the computing system 18 may comprise a picture controller 32 adjacent to the human machine interface 34. The picture controller may be arranged to control the presentation of the plurality of pictures presented by the human-machine interface.

10 In one embodiment, the available materials are determined by a provider and then passed to a distributor. The provider may or may not be the manufacturer of the product being represented. The distributor acts as a central, authoritative source for users to download or otherwise acquire material information from. The distributer may control the configuration system 10, for 5 example. In this way, the user is freed from specifying or providing parameters for materials as they can simply acquire resources as needed and generate any components using these. The provided material information has the advantage of being accurate, automatic, and representing a real attainable product. This lowers the barriers for the users to enter the system, as they do not need to understand how the system operates but only how to interact with the system. This could 0 also be used by users in a decision making process or a feasibility study, as a variety of options may be displayed to the user, allowing the user to use the distributor as a catalogue. The configuration system may be configured to send instructions to the graphical human-machine interface to alert the user 22 of changes to material procurement information, like changes in material dimensions, availability, cost etc. The user 22 may subsequently select new materials 5 as required. The configuration system 10 may comprise an optional structure information module 36. The structure information module 36 may be arranged to use the geometry information to generate information indicative of at least one of: material take off; cost; scheduling information; purchase order information for materials constituting the plurality of components; sustainability 0 information; weight information; life cycle information; maintenance scheduling information; insulation value information; embodied energy information; solar heat gain information; manufacturer information; locality information; thermal properties, fire resistance, acoustic values, molecular structure, and carcinogen information indicative of carcinogens within the structure. 25 The system may process the geometry information and/or any other information to generate the material take off. Applying the relevant additional information to the material take off, for example cost/unit of material, supplier information, etc. generates the types of structure information described above. Communications 30 Communications between parts of the configuration system 10 and between the configuration system and external modules and/or systems may take any suitable form. The data conduit between the computing system 18 and the configuration system 10 may comprise, for example, an Ethernet physical layer, USB physical layer, Thunderbolt physical 11 layer, Bluetooth physical layer, IEEE 802.11 physical layer, and appropriate protocols that sit over the physical layer, for example Ethernet, Infiniband, IP, TCP, USB protocols, or generally any suitable protocols. The data conduit may comprise the Internet. The configuration system 10 and the computing system 18 may generally each have suitable 5 communications hardware, for example an Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC), USB host controller, or generally any suitable networking circuitry, in communication with the data conduit. The data conduit may comprise a PCI express connection between hardware modules. The configuration system 10 may be software within the computing system 18, in which case 0 the data conduit may be data flows into and out of at least one software defined module, in the form of, for example, function calls. User software The computing system 18, but not necessarily all examples, has software 20 that includes computer aided design (CAD) elements. The software may be operable by the user to 5 generate the component information 14 and the material information 16. For example, the user may draw in lines representative of the components and their relative arrangement. In another example, the computing system 18 has software that enables the user to type coordinate information indicative of the structure and save the coordinate information to a file for subsequent sending to the configuration system 10. 0 Modifying material parameters The configuration system may receive modified material parameter information generated by the user operating the computer system 18. Architecture Figure 9 shows a schematic diagram of an example architecture of the systems 10, 18. The 25 systems 10, 18 each take the form, in some embodiments, of a processor 144. The processor incorporates modules including those numbered 12, 20, 24,28,30, 32, 34 and 36 in figure 1. The processor controls the execution of the steps of the example of the method of figure 3. The method may be coded in a program for instructing the processor. The program is, in this embodiment stored in nonvolatile memory 158 in the form of a hard disk drive, but could be 30 stored in FLASH, EPROM or any other form of tangible media within or external of the processor. The program generally, but not necessarily, comprises a plurality of software modules 12 that cooperate when installed on the processor so that the steps of an embodiment of the method are performed. The software modules, at least in part, correspond to the steps of the method or components of the systems described above. The functions or components may be compartmentalised into modules or may be fragmented across several software modules. The 5 software modules may be formed using any suitable language, examples of which include C++ and assembly. The program may take the form of an application program interface or any other suitable software structure. The processor 144 includes a suitable micro processor 152 such as, or similar to, the INTEL XEON or AMD OPTERON micro processor connected over a bus 148 to a random access memory 146 of around 1GB and a non-volatile memory such as a hard disk 0 drive 158 or solid state non-volatile memory having a capacity of around 1 Tb. Alternative logic devices may be used in place of the microprocessor 152. Some of these embodiments may be entirely hardware based for further latency reduction. The processor 144 has input/output interfaces 150 which may include one or more network interfaces, and a universal serial bus controller. The processor may support the human machine interface 154 e.g. mouse, keyboard, 5 display etc. The systems may have alternative architectures than that described above. For example, the system may be implemented in at least one application specific integrated circuit, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), and other custom hardware forms as suitable and appropriate. Hardware implementations may provide significant speed advantages that may be 0 highly desirable for large and/or complex digital models of structures. Data representation of materials. In the embodiment of figures 1 and 4 but not necessarily in all embodiments, a collection of material information is stored using a hash table loaded into memory from a serialized source, such as a JSON document, XML document, a binary format or generally any suitable source. 25 Materials are referenced by by a unique key, such as a UUID or integer. Each record referenced by the hash table contains information including a display name for the user and an ordered list of references to products for the material. For example, a "rendered brick wall" material may contain products describing the brick product, render product and a paint product. Products could also be stored, and retrieved, from similar sources. A key within a products hash table could be a 30 UUID or other unique identifier, and the value would contain information such as its display name, associated brands, intended uses, data for visual representation generation such as colour, texture and opacity, and any meta data about the product such as width, thickness and carbon content. The data could also be stored and retrieved in various alternate ways, such as material 13 and product records within arrays or within a relational database such as an SQL implementation. The rendered visualisation for each material would be the result of parsing the products, in their given order, and processing the visual representation data. Computations 5 In one embodiment, the user selects a material for a component of the digital model of the structure using a drop down menu or a dialogue box. For example, the user has drawn a house and now requires the total lineal measure of 90 x 35 mm timber specified by the model. After the component materials are specified, the system then configures the digital model of the structure, which is represented by a data structure tree comprising a plurality of nodes, each node 0 corresponding to one of the components. Similar data structures are used by CAD software packages. Figures 10 and 12 show examples of data structure trees for structures. The user selects a takeoff or bill of materials (BOM) / material take off icon onscreen to start the process of the system going through the model to find the required information. The computer then traverses through the tree structure to find the appropriate information and uses the appropriate 5 equation to quantize and render out the material to the appropriate section in a spreadsheet document and/or BOM. Processing the digital model is now described with reference to figure 10. Starting at the highest node, the tree is traversed. At each node, a number of operations may occur, including but not limited to, signaling to stop traversing deeper down a particular branch, to add, modify or 0 remove data to the data structure, to search deeper down a particular branch or to ignore specific information. The structure may then be rendered from the data structure tree to a human-usable format, such as a spreadsheet application or HTML document, or to a computer readable format such as a binary representation or JSON document. This process may be used to generate schedules for construction, product purchase orders, material cut lists, cost estimations, labour 25 requirements and the like. Variations and/or modifications may be made to the embodiments described without departing from the spirit or ambit of the invention. The present embodiments are, therefore, to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive. Prior art, if any, described herein is not to be taken as an admission that the prior art forms part 30 of the common general knowledge in any jurisdiction. In the claims which follow and in the preceding description of the invention, except where the context requires otherwise due to express language or necessary implication, the word 14 "comprise" or variations such as "comprises" or "comprising" is used in an inclusive sense, that is to specify the presence of the stated features but not to preclude the presence or addition of further features in various embodiments of the invention.

Claims

1. A system for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure, the system comprising: a receiver arranged to receive component information indicative of a 5 plurality of components of the structure and the relative arrangement of the plurality of components, and arranged to receive component material information indicative of a material for each of the plurality of components, the component material information having been generated by a user selecting a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components; and 0 a geometry generator arranged to generate geometry information indicating the geometry of each of the plurality of components by applying geometric information to the component information, the geometric information being indicative of a geometric property of the material for each of the plurality of components. 5

2. A system defined by claim 1 wherein the component information is indicative of material independent dimensions of each of the plurality of components.

3. A system defined by either one of claim 1 and claim 2 comprising a graphical human machine interface arranged to present a plurality of pictures of a plurality of materials to the user for the user to select from the plurality of pictures the picture of the material for 0 each of the plurality of components.

4. A system defined by claim 3 comprising a server in communication with the graphical human-machine interface, the server being arranged to control the presentation of the plurality of pictures presented by the human-machine interface.

5. A system defined by either one of claim 3 and claim 4 comprising a picture controller 25 adjacent to the human machine interface arranged to control the presentation of the plurality of pictures presented by the human-machine interface.

6. A system defined by any one of the claims I to 5 wherein the plurality of components comprise at least one of a wall, a roof, a slab, a post, a frame, and a joist.

7. A system defined by any one of the claims 1 to 6 comprising a structure information 30 module arranged to use the geometry information to generate information indicative of at least one of: material take off; cost; scheduling information; purchase order information 16 for materials constituting the plurality of components; sustainability information; weight information; life cycle information; maintenance scheduling information; insulation value information; embodied energy information; solar heat gain information; manufacturer information; locality information; and carcinogen information indicative of carcinogens 5 within the structure.

8. A method for configuring a three dimensional digital model of a structure, the method comprising: receiving component information indicative of a plurality of components of the structure and the relative arrangement of the plurality of components; 0 receiving component material information indicative of a material for each of the plurality of components, the component material information having been generated by a user selecting a picture of the material for each of the plurality of components; and generating geometry information indicating the geometry of each of the 5 plurality of components by applying geometric information to the component information, the geometric information being indicative of a geometric property of the material for each of the plurality of components.

9. A method defined by claim 8 wherein the component information is indicative of material independent dimensions of each of the plurality of components. 0

10. A method defined by either one of claim 8 and claim 9 wherein the step of the user selecting the picture of the material for each of the plurality of components comprises a graphical human-machine interface presenting a plurality of pictures of a plurality of materials to the user, and the user using the graphical human-machine interface to select from the plurality of pictures a picture of the material for each of 25 the plurality of components.

11. A method defined by claim 10 comprising the step of a server remote of the graphical human-machine interface controlling the presentation of the plurality of pictures.

12. A method defined by either one of claim 10 and claim 11 comprising the step of a 30 picture determiner adjacent to the human-machine interface controlling the presentation of the plurality of pictures. 17

13. A method defined by any one of the claims 8 to 12 wherein the plurality of components comprise at least one of a wall, a roof, a slab, a post, a frame, and a joist.

14. A method defined by any one of the claims 8 to 13 wherein the geometric information is indicative of at least one of a thickness, length, breadth, an internal 5 configuration, and a pitch of at least one of the plurality of components.

15. A method defined by any one of the preceding claims 8 to 14 comprising the step of using the geometry information to generate structure information indicative of at least one of: material take off; cost; scheduling information; purchase order information for materials constituting the plurality of components; sustainability information; weight 0 information; life cycle information; maintenance scheduling information; insulation value information; embodied energy information; solar heat gain information; manufacturer information; locality information; and carcinogen information indicative of carcinogens within the structure.

16. Processor readable tangible media including program instructions which when executed 5 by a processor causes the processor to perform a method defined by any one of the claims 8 to 15.

17. Disclosed herein is a computer program for instructing a processor, which when executed by the processor causes the processor to perform a method defined by any one of the claims 8 to 15. 0