Patent ID: 8121820

Claim:
A method for generating a construction cost estimate for a building structure, comprising: loading a schematic drawing of the building structure, the schematic drawing comprising an architectural plan; receiving a designation of a building type for the building structure; receiving a plurality of tags, each tag identifying a center of a functional zone demarcated within the schematic drawing; generating a graph-based topology comprising a plurality of nodes and one or more links by dividing the architectural plan into triangles by connecting key points within the architectural plan, the triangles comprising primary triangles and adjacent triangles, wherein each primary triangle comprises one of the plurality of tags, linking two or more of the primary triangles with one or more adjacent triangles to form two or more polygons, wherein each one of the two or more polygons corresponds to a functional zone, generating the plurality of nodes, each node representing the functional zone corresponding to one of the two or more polygons, and generating the one or more links, each link representing an adjacency between two functional zones; linking architectural design standards to each of the functional zones identified within the graph-based topology to generate architectural design requirements for each of the functional zones, wherein the architectural design standards comprise design criteria for the building type and are stored in a relational database, and wherein the architectural design requirements comprise at least one of specification data and performance data; quantifying geometric measurements for each of the functional zones demarcated within the schematic drawing; and generating construction cost estimates for each of the architectural design requirements using architectural design cost estimation data and the geometric measurements of the functional zones identified, wherein the architectural design cost estimation data is stored in the relational database.