Abstract. With the growing interest in deep learning algorithms and computational design in the architectural field, the need for large, accessible and diverse architectural datasets increases. Due to the complexity of such 3D datasets, the most widespread techniques of 3D scanning and manual building modeling are very time-consuming, which does not allow to have a sufficiently large open-source dataset. We decided to tackle this problem by constructing a field-specific synthetic data generation pipeline that generates an arbitrary amount of 3D data along with the associated 2D and 3D annotations. The variety of annotations, the flexibility to customize the generated building and dataset parameters make this framework suitable for multiple deep learning tasks, including geometric deep learning that requires direct 3D supervision. Creating our building data generation pipeline we leveraged the experts’ architectural knowledge in order to construct a framework that would be modular, extendable and would provide a sufficient amount of class-balanced data samples. Moreover, we purposefully involve the researcher in the dataset customization allowing the introduction of additional building components, material textures, building classes, number and type of annotations as well as the number of views per 3D model sample. In this way, the framework would satisfy different research requirements and would be adaptable to a large variety of tasks. All code and data is made publicly available: https://cdinstitute.github.io/Building-Dataset-Generator/.

This paper aims to test algorithms for 3D reconstruction from a single image specifically for building envelopes. This research shows the current limitations of these approaches when applied to classes outside of the initial distribution. We tested solutions with differentiable rendering, implicit functions, and other end-to-end geometric deep learning approaches. We recognize the importance of generating a 3D reconstruction from a single image for many different industries, not only for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry but also for robotics, autonomous driving, gaming, virtual and augmented reality, drone delivery, 3D authoring, improving 2D recognition and many others. Henceforth, engineers and computer scientists could benefit, not only from having the 3D representations but also from the Building Information Model (BIM) at their disposal. With further development of these algorithms it could be possible to access specific properties such as thermal, physical, maintenance, cost, and other parameters embedded in the class.