ENGINEERING CAD TOOLS IN DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Abstract

This paper presents an original approach in the virtual reconstruction of destroyed ancient monument types which have no similarities to other standing monuments, or documentation about the design of these constructions. In this case the virtual reconstruction is a challenging act, which can be done using a large variety of designs. These designs must be validated not just from an archaeological or historical, but also from an engineering point of view, to create valid virtual models from the construction’s point of view. For this reason the authors chose to create the virtual reconstructions in Computer Aided Design (CAD) environment, in the detriment of design software’s, because it’s easier to create the virtual models and to do the simulations in the same software environment. Also in this paper are presented different reconstruction methods (photogrammetry using profile drawings and knowledge database creation) that can be achieved with the use of CAD software. The authors used different levels of details (LOD), which can be helpful in the validation process, where can be observed the structure of the monuments very detailed, and for renderings for dissemination. The case study was conducted on a destroyed Dacian watch tower by an interdisciplinary team composed of archaeologists, historians and engineers. The reconstruction of the watch tower was carried out in CATIA V5, and was disseminated through a video render, an virtual reality website and was imported into an augmented reality application.