Abstract:
The U.S. housing industry appears to be on the brink of extensive computerization
as a result of competitive pressures within the U.S.A., and from Europe and
Japan. The Japanese lead the U.S. in computerizing the sales through design
processes and the Swedes and Norwegians lead in the design through production
processes. Computer-based tools for evaluating the energy performance of buildings
have low levels of use throughout the industrialized housing field. If a computer-
based energy evaluation tool is to be used, it must fit with the computers and
software already used to produce and market industrialized housing. Therefore
an energy tool which works with CAD systems, the most common non MIS computer
use in industrialized housing, is more likely to be useful and actually utilized
than one which does not.