Thanks to the development of generic and powerful 3D modeling softwares, such as 3dsMax or Maya, artists or designers could more easily convert their ideas into reality. More specifically, commercial tools such as AutoCAD and Revit have become indispensable for architecture designers. The fact that many creative amateur artists or designers may also have the desire to innovate in discovering new styles or renovate old ones has made the aforementioned tools very valuable to them as well. However, the expensive price and intricate details of these tools have rendered them relatively inaccessible to most people, thus the existence of many modeling tools with intermediate prices and complicacy. Though convenient, these tools are mainly designed for generating regular architectures or mimicking existing ones. As a consequence, the associated efficiency and user friendliness come at the expense of sacrificing the flexibility or diversity.

In this thesis, we propose a new framework for architecture prototyping via the concept of 3D collage, that is, a combination of geometrically transformed components segmented from multiple source architectures. In addition, our proposed framework features three desired functionalities as follows. First, during the construction process, two components can be snapped together through the most matched faces. Second, deformation can be performed arbitrarily on any face of the resulting mesh. Third, the assignment of color and texture attributes on the resulting mesh is intuitively and flexibly done in user-friendly manner. By enjoying a simpler user interface, our system strikes a good balance between efficiency and expressiveness, thus making it particularly appropriate for the purpose of architecture prototyping. Results are shown to demonstrate that our framework is not only good at simulating a wide variety of existing architectures, but also capable of creating even avant-garde architectural styles.

當今的3D建模系統，例如Autodesk旗下的商用軟體3ds Max或Maya等均提供了強大且豐富的建模以及編輯功能，讓設計師得以利用這些工具去實踐自己的想法，尤其在建築的領域上，Autodesk所開發的AutoCAD和Revit這兩套商用軟體更是特別針對建築這塊領域，提供了專業的操作與設計功能，對於一個設計師來說，這些軟體無疑是幫助他們構築心中想法的好幫手。然而，上述系統所需要的學習成本都很高，所以近年來有許多的研究都傾向開發讓一般使用者也能快速上手的3D建模系統，讓建模的操作變得單純而容易使用。而在3D建築建模方面，這類快速建模系統大多要求建築的〝合理性〞，基於這個理由，系統在提供簡易操作介面和高效率建模方法的同時，卻也犧牲了建模的自由度和多樣性。

因此，為了改善上述系統的缺點，我們提出了利用3D拼貼的概念，再透過簡易操作的介面合併各式各樣的建築元件去構築建築外觀(原型)。為了達成這個概念，我們的系統提供了三種必要的功能：第一，系統提供自動貼合的功能讓兩個3D元件在建模的程序中可以任意黏合任兩個相異元件的表面；第二，變形功能讓使用者能夠在元件的任何一個表面做變形，增加mesh表面的豐富度；第三，系統提供使用者透過簡單的操作在model上著色或貼上材質。我們希望透過這個簡易的建模介面，讓使用者能夠有效率的進行建築外觀(原型)的建模，並獲得預期中的效果。在論文最後的實驗成果和結論部分，我們會證明系統能夠快速簡單的建立現實中已經存在的建築外觀，也能利用系統所提供的功能創造出前衛的建築風格。