Architectural drawings recognition and generation through machine learning

Abstract

With the development of information technology, the ideas of programming and mass calculation were introduced into the design field, resulting in the growth of computer-aided design. With the idea of designing by data, we began to manipulate data directly, and interpret data through design works. Machine Learning as a decision making tool has been widely used in many fields. It can be used to analyze large amounts of data and predict future changes. Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is a model framework in machine learning. It’s specially designed to learn and generate output data with similar or identical characteristics. Pix2pixHD is a modified version of GAN that learns image data in pairs and generates new images based on the input. The author applied pix2pixHD in recognizing and generating architectural drawings, marking rooms with different colors and then generating apartment plans through two convolutional neural networks. Next, in order to understand how these networks work, the author analyzed their framework, and provided an explanation of the three working principles of the networks, convolution layer, residual network layer and deconvolution layer. Lastly, in order to visualize the networks in architectural drawings, the author derived data from different layer and different training epochs, and visualized the findings as gray scale images. It was found that the features of the architectural plan drawings have been gradually learned and stored as parameters in the networks. As the networks get deeper and the training epoch increases, the features in the graph become more concise and clearer. This phenomenon may be inspiring in understanding the designing behavior of humans.