3D Reconstruction of Detailed Buildings from Architectural Drawings - Paper 527-536

Oct 24, 2026

Automatic conversion of 2D architectural construction structural drawings into accurate 3D models is crucial for tasks such as quantity surveying, construction planning, and visualization. This paper presents a method for accurate 3D reconstruction from real-life architectural drawings, integrating and normalizing architectural information dispersed across multiple drawings and tables. The approach is guided by semantics and prior domain knowledge, producing reconstructed detailed 3D buildings suitable for downstream engineering uses.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

1. Introduction

Architectural design and 2D drawings

Need for automatic 3D reconstruction

527 3D Reconstruction of Detailed Buildings from Architectural Drawings Tong Lu1, Chiew-Lan Tai2, Li Bao1, Feng Su1 and Shijie Cai1 1Nanjing University, [lu_tong@263.net](lu_tong@263.net) 2The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, [taicl@cs.ust.hk](taicl@cs.ust.hk) ABSTRACT Due to the difficulties in designing and modifying a complex 3D architectural building in 3D space, 2D drawings are often a more effective means for design. However, for various applications such as quantity surveying and visualization, it is necessary to convert 2D architectural drawings to 3D models. In this paper, we propose a new method for accurate 3D reconstruction from real-life architectural drawings. The method integrates and normalizes architectural information dispersed in multiple drawings and tables under the guidance of semantics and prior domain knowledge. Thereconstructed detailed 3D building can be used for quantity surveying, construction, and 4D modeling. Keywords: 3D reconstruction; architectural drawings; detailed 3D building. 1. INTRODUCTION In the last two decades, we have seen a great development in 3D modeling using solid modeling techniques and parametric representations for mechanical engineering and computer-aided production. In contrast, there has been little progress in the development of 3D design in the field of architecture [1] . The main reasons are that architecture design involves complex products, consisting of a great many distinct parts, and creating and editing these kinds of 3D models in 3D space are difficult. Hence, architecture design continues to be done on 2D drawings. However, for various construction applications, such as quantity surveying, inventory, construction, and visualization, it is necessary to convert the widely used 2D architectural drawings to accurate 3D models. In real life, an architect designs a building by drawing a set of 2D drawings, depicting the layout, dimensions, and internal structures of various structural objects as well as the mechanical design (e.g. , steel bars or concrete) of these structural objects (see Fig. 1 and details in Section 2) . These drawings are called Construction Structural Drawings (CSDs) . They are the most important kind of architectural drawings for quantity surveying and construction. Toreconstruct a detailed 3D building, it is necessary to use the CSDs. In practice, the conversion from the 2D architectural construction drawings to 3D models is always carried out manually or semi-automatically. Skilled persons are needed to interpret the paper drawings or electronic drawings based on their acquired domain knowledge. They must understand the designer’s intentions, reconstruct the 3D building in their mind, and finally, calculate the useful engineering data manually for various applications. This is animprecise and time-consuming approach. The low efficiency of human interpretation is a huge obstacle in communication between designers and engineers, which not only hinders the information flow among different users, but also becomes the bottleneck of the automation effort in construction. Therefore, the automatic reconstruction of detailed 3D buildings for real-life applications is an important and urgent research topic. There have been abundant research results in mechanical reconstruction from drawings. However, these algorithms have some common characteristics that limit their direct applicability to the field of architecture. Nevertheless, they form a good basis for the problem of reconstruction from architectural drawings, especially the purely geometric methods [2-6] . One family of algorithms, known as fleshing-out projections, is based on the reconstruction of a wireframe model by matching vertices and edges between drawings depicting orthographic views of the object, and then finding the faces of the object by propagating the constraints on the wire-frame model. Another family of algorithms is volume-oriented, which fir

FAQs

Why are 2D architectural drawings often used instead of directly designing in 3D space?

Architecture design involves complex products with many distinct parts, and creating/editing corresponding 3D models in 3D space is difficult. Therefore, design is commonly carried out on 2D drawings.

What is the paper’s proposed approach for 3D reconstruction?

It proposes a method that integrates and normalizes architectural information dispersed across multiple drawings and tables, guided by semantics and prior domain knowledge.

What limitations restrict applying mechanical drawing reconstruction methods to architectural drawings?

Mechanical methods often require perfect input data and focus on geometric aspects only, while architectural drawings are imperfect and include significant symbolic/semantic information that depends strongly on context.

Oct 24, 2026

Upload by EvelynWrites