Using engineering drawing interpretation for automatic detection of version information in CADD engineering drawing

Engineering drawings produced by computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) software are widely employed in the construction industry, as well as many other manufacturing sectors. It is very common for a drawing plan to undergo many revisions, thus, many different versions of the drawing are generated before the final product is achieved. Thus, a drawing management system needs to maintain the history of different versions of drawings, and version control becomes a key function for any drawing management system. In this paper, a knowledge-based version information extraction method is presented. The method analyzes the layout of the drawing frame and extracts the version information with the help of predefined key words. Then a comparison method between two versions of drawing is introduced. The comparison method highlights the differences between two versions of the drawings, so that engineers can locate and find the changes quickly. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.