Computer-aided architectural designs and associated covariants

• The concept of covariants is introduced.
• Covariants are used to compare two different architectural designs.
• A software prototype CPAD is presented.
• CPAD generates architectural floorplans and their adjacency graphs.
• CPAD also computes covariants associated with obtained floorplans.

To compare two architectural designs or to characterize them, some numbers are needed. These numbers are said to be covariants.In this paper, we present a software prototype that generates a floor plan design and its adjacency graph for a given set of data, and computes some mathematical covariants associated with the obtained design. In addition, we discuss and demonstrate the usefulness of covariants in comparing the architectural designs and in obtaining a best design among many possible solutions.