Abstract: This paper deals with the recognition of symbols and struc- tural textures in architectural plans using string matching techniques. A plan is represented by an attributed graph whose nodes represent characteristic points and whose edges represent segments. Symbols and textures can be seen as a set of regions, i.e. closed loops in the graph, with a particular arrangement. The search for a symbol involves a graph matching between the regions of a model graph and the regions of the graph representing the document. Discriminating a texture means a clus- tering of neighbouring regions of this graph. Both procedures involve a similarity measure between graph regions. A string codification is used to represent the sequence of outlining edges of a region. Thus, the simila- rity between two regions is defined in terms of the string edit distance between their boundary strings. The use of string matching allows the recognition method to work also under presence of distortion.

Abstract: En los últimos años, se ha introducido ámpliamente el uso de los sistemas CAD en dominios relacionados con la arquitectura. Dichos sistemas CAD son muy útiles para el arquitecto en el diseño de planos de plantas de edificios. Sin embargo, la utilización eficiente de un CAD requiere un tiempo de aprendizaje, en especial, en la etapa de creación y edición del diseño. Además, una vez familiarizado con un CAD, el arquitecto debe adaptarse a la simbología que éste le permite que, en algunos casos puede ser poco flexible.Con esta motivación, se propone una técnica alternativa de entrada de documentos en sistemas CAD. Dicha técnica se basa en el diseño del plano sobre papel mediante un dibujo lineal hecho a mano alzada a modo de boceto e introducido mediante scanner. Una vez interpretado este dibujo inicial e introducido en el CAD, el arquitecto sólo deber hacer sobre éste los retoques finales del documento.El sistema de entrada propuesto se compone de dos módulos principales: En primer lugar, la extracción de características (puntos característicos, rectas y arcos) de la imagen obtenida mediante scanner. En dicho módulo se aplican principalmente técnicas de procesamiento de imágenes obteniendo como resultado una representaci¢n del dibujo de entrada basada en grafos de atributos. El objetivo del segundo módulo es el de encontrar y reconocer las entidades integrantes del documento (puertas, mesas, etc.) en base a una biblioteca de símbolos definida en el sistema CAD. La implementación de dicho módulo se basa en técnicas de isomorfismo de grafos.El sistema propone una alternativa que permita, mediante el diseño a mano alzada, la introducción de la informaci¢n m s significativa del plano de forma rápida, sencilla y estandarizada por parte del usuario.

Abstract: This paper presents a system to understand hand drawn architectural drawings in a CAD environment. The procedure is to identify in a floor plan the building elements, stored in a library of patterns, and their spatial relationships. The vectorized input document and the patterns to recognize are represented by attributed graphs. To recognize the patterns as such, we apply a structural approach based on subgraph isomorphism techniques. In spite of their value, graph matching techniques do not recognize adequately those building elements characterized by hatching patterns, i.e. walls. Here we focus on the recognition of hatching patterns and develop a straight line Hough transform based method in order to detect the regions filled in with parallel straight fines. This allows not only to recognize filling patterns, but it actually reduces the computational load associated with the subgraph isomorphism computation. The result is that the document can be redrawn by editing all the patterns recognized

Abstract: Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an educational strategy to improve student’s learning capability that, in recent years, has had a progressive acceptance in undergraduate studies. This methodology is based on solving a problem or project in a student working group. In this way, PBL focuses on learning the necessary tools to correctly find a solution to given problems. Since the learning initiative is transferred to the student, the PBL method promotes students own abilities. This allows a better assessment of the true workload that carries out the student in the subject. It follows that the methodology conforms to the guidelines of the Bologna document, which quantifies the student workload in a subject by means of the European credit transfer system (ECTS). PBL is currently applied in undergraduate studies needing strong practical training such as medicine, nursing or law sciences. Although this is also the case in engineering studies, amazingly, few experiences have been reported. In this paper we propose to use PBL in the educational organization of the Computer Graphics subjects in the Computer Science degree. Our PBL project focuses in the development of a C++ graphical environment based on the OpenGL libraries for visualization and handling of different graphical objects. The starting point is a basic skeleton that already includes lighting functions, perspective projection with mouse interaction to change the point of view and three predefined objects. Students have to complete this skeleton by adding their own functions to solve the project. A total number of 10 projects have been proposed and successfully solved. The exercises range from human face rendering to articulated objects, such as robot arms or puppets. In the present paper we extensively report the statement and educational objectives for two of the projects: solar system visualization and a chess game. We report our earlier educational experience based on the standard classroom theoretical, problem and practice sessions and the reasons that motivated searching for other learning methods. We have mainly chosen PBL because it improves the student learning initiative. We have applied the PBL educational model since the beginning of the second semester. The student’s feedback increases in his interest for the subject. We present a comparative study of the teachers’ and students’ workload between PBL and the classic teaching approach, which suggests that the workload increase in PBL is not as high as it seems.