Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
DETAILED ACTION
1. The amendment filed 03/23/2026 has been received and considered. Claims 1-3, 5-10, 12-17, and 19-20 are presented for examination.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
2. Claims 1-2, 5-9, 12-16, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Struzyna et al. (US 11087035 B2A1), and further in view of Austern et al. (US 20210073441 A1).
As per Claim 1, 8 and 15, Struzyna et al. teaches a computer-implemented method/system/ on-transitory computer-readable medium of placing a set of building elements within a building model (Fig. 8, [0036]-[0042]) comprising: one or more processors; and a non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations (Fig. 8), the method comprising:
obtaining an interior point cloud using an interior scanning machine, the interior point cloud having been generated by scanning at least one room of the building (Fig. 1 [0020] “an interior point cloud 114 may be generated by an interior scanning machine 112 by scanning the internal surfaces of building 106.”, [0037] “At step 802, an interior point cloud (e.g., interior point cloud 114) is received from a first scanning machine (e.g., interior scanning machine 112);
defining a set of space bodies within a building by processing the interior point cloud, wherein each of the set of space bodies represents a non-overlapping volume within the building ([0038] “At step 804, a plurality of space bodies (e.g., space bodies 140) are defined. In some embodiments, the plurality of space bodies are defined using the interior point cloud and/or the exterior point cloud by performing surface reconstruction….For example, the previously constructed building model may be analyzed to define the size, shape, and position of each of the plurality of space bodies.”);
forming a set of gaps between the set of space bodies ([0039] “At step 806, a plurality of gaps between the plurality of space bodies are determined. One or more of the plurality of gaps may be a line extending between a first and a second space body of the plurality of space bodies, or may be a volume between a first and a second space body of the plurality of space bodies. In some embodiments, the plurality of gaps may include all possible volumes between at least two space bodies.”).
obtaining a set of placement rules for the set of building elements based on physical characteristics of the set of gaps; and
generating a set of placements for the set of building elements within the building model in accordance with the set of placement rules.
Struzyna et al. fails to teach explicitly obtaining a set of placement rules for the set of building elements based on physical characteristics of the set of gaps; and
generating a set of placements for the set of building elements within the building model in accordance with the set of placement rules.
Austern et al. teaches obtaining a set of placement rules for the set of building elements based on physical characteristics of the set of gaps ([0142], [0147], [0181], Fig. 23 [0648]-[0649] “generatively analyzing the at least one room in conjunction with the functional requirements and the selected technical specifications in order to select a piece of equipment for the at least one room and select an equipment placement location of the selected piece of equipment within the at least one room. ”); and
generating a set of placements for the set of building elements within the building model in accordance with the set of placement rules ([0149], [0151], [0182] “outputting technical specifications and placement locations for the equipment…. the output may include modifying the floor plan to include the equipment locations and technical specification.”, Fig. 23 [0649]-[0651] “generating a wiring diagram for the at least one room using the selected technical specifications and the structural data, wherein the wiring diagram includes a graphical representation on the floor plan of the equipment placement location of the selected piece of equipment and wiring runs to the selected piece of equipment. ”).
Struzyna et al. and Austern et al. are analogous art because they are both related to a method for building design model.
It would have obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of cited references. Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention would have been motivated to incorporate Austern et al. into Struzyna et al.’s invention for designing floor plans for buildings to generate an improved system for creating comprehensive, detailed, and accurate diagrams for building planning and construction (Austern et al.: [0003]).
As per Claim 2, 9 and 16, Struzyna et al. teaches wherein … of the set of gaps include thicknesses of the set of gaps (Fig. 5, [0027]-[0029] “where a particular gap of the plurality of gaps is defined as a volume, the gap thickness may be equal to the minimum thickness of the volume, the maximum thickness of the volume, the average thickness of the volume, among other possibilities.”).
Struzyna et al. fails to teach explicitly the physical characteristics.
Austern et al. teaches the physical characteristics ([0132]-[0133] “to identify walls, windows, doors and other architectural feature which may demarcate the contours of the room.”, “After identifying a series of polygons that may be potential walls (e.g. wall candidates), rooms and their contours may be identified, for example, by offsetting the polygons outwards by 50-100 mm to close gaps and joining all polygon borders using polygon Boolean operation. This may result in a large border polygon, with several “hole” polygons. The “hole” polygons may be considered rooms, for example if they meet certain conditions. Examples of the many types of conditions, may include, for example minimum area, minimum width and rules against not being nested into each other. Another example geometric analysis for the identification of doors may include searching for containment of possible door geometries (e.g. an arc and a line with similar sizes/radii which meet in their end points) within room boundaries.”); [0428] “the room feature may include … a width of the room, a height of the room, or any other features associated with a room geometry.”; [0830] “Identify windows by looking for aggregations of parallel lines of roughly the size and direction enclosed within blocks which has a high length/width ratio. Identifying such windows may enable the closing gaps in room perimeters, for example.”, [0142], [0147], [0181], Fig. 23 [0648]-[0649])
As per Claim 5, 12 and 19, Struzyna et al. teaches obtaining an exterior point cloud using an exterior scanning machine, the exterior point cloud having been generated using the exterior scanning machine by scanning an exterior of the building, wherein the set of space bodies are defined further using the exterior point cloud (Fig. 1, [0019] “an exterior scanning machine 102 is used to generate an exterior point cloud 104 of the external surfaces of building 106.”).
As per Claim 6 and 13, Struzyna et al. teaches wherein the interior scanning machine and the exterior scanning machine are different scanning machines (Fig. 1 element 102 and 112 [0019]-[0020] “exterior scanning machine 102 may be an autonomous computer-guided vehicle such as a drone configured to fly around building 106”, “interior scanning machine 112 may be a mountable device or a self-standing device that may be positioned near the center of a room by a user.”, “interior scanning machine 112 and exterior scanning machine 102 may be the same machine or different machines.”).
As per Claim 7, 14 and 20, Struzyna et al. teaches further comprising: receiving an existing building model, wherein the set of space bodies are defined further by analyzing the existing building model ([0003] “receiving an existing building model. In some embodiments, the plurality of space bodies is defined by analyzing the existing building model.”).
3. Claims 3, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Struzyna et al. (US 11087035 B2A1), in view of Austern et al. (US 20210073441 A1), and further in view of Xiong et al. (“Automatic creation of semantically rich 3D building models from laser scanner data”).
Struzyna et al. as modified by Austern et al. teaches most all the instant invention as applied to claims 1-2, 5-9, 12-16, and 19-20 above.
As per Claim 3, 10 and 17, Struzyna et al. as modified by Austern et al. teaches wherein obtaining the set of placement rules includes: … obtaining the set of placement rules for the set of building elements based on … (i) the physical characteristics of the set of gaps (Austern et al.: [0132]-[0133], [0428], [0830], Fig. 23)
Struzyna et al. as modified by Austern et al. fails to teach explicitly wherein obtaining the set of placement rules includes: classifying a set of faces of the set of space bodies to obtain a set of face classifications; and… (ii) the set of face classifications.
Xiong et al. teaches wherein obtaining the set of placement rules includes: classifying a set of faces of the set of space bodies to obtain a set of face classifications; and… (ii) the set of face classifications (section 3, Fig. 3
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pg 328). In particular, Xiong et al. teaches classifying planar patches extracted form a pint cloud into the categories wall, floor, ceiling, and clutter using a context based stacked classification algorithm (section 3).
Struzyna et al., Austern et al. and Xiong et al. are analogous art because they are both related to a method for building design model.
It would have obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of cited references. Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention would have been motivated to incorporate Xiong et al. into Struzyna et al. as modified by Austern et al.’s invention for designing floor plans for buildings to generate an improved system for creating comprehensive, detailed, and accurate diagrams for building planning and construction (Struzyna et al.: [0003]). Further motivation to combine the classification of Xiong et al. as an additional rule input alongside the physical characteristics of the gaps already carried forward Claim 1 is to yield the predictable benefit of enabling the existing placement rules to treat ceiling-bounding, floor-bounding, and wall-bounding faces differently when placing build elements for example, elements appropriate to a ceiling-bounding face are not placed on a wall-bounding face; as doing so extends a rule engine that already accepts one geometry-derived rule input to accept a second rule input of the same kind, which is a routine engineering matter of extending an existing rule-input interrace to an additional input that is already available as an output of the Xiong et al.’s classification step.
Response to Arguments
4. Applicant's arguments filed 03/23/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Examiner respectfully withdraws Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101 in view of the amendment and/or applicant’s arguments.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument:
As per Claim 1-2, 5-9, 12-16, and 19-20: Struzyna et al.as in view of Austern et al.
As per Claim 3, 10 and 17: Struzyna et al.as in view of Austern et al. and further in view of Xiong et al.
Conclusion
5. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Ochmann S, Vock R, Wessel R, Klein R. Automatic reconstruction of parametric building models from indoor point clouds. Computers & Graphics. 2016 Feb 1;54:94-103.
Previtali M, Díaz-Vilariño L, Scaioni M. Indoor building reconstruction from occluded point clouds using graph-cut and ray-tracing. Applied Sciences. 2018 Sep 1;8(9):1529.
6. Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EUNHEE KIM whose telephone number is (571)272-2164. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9am-5pm ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ryan Pitaro can be reached at (571)272-4071. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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EUNHEE KIM
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2188
/EUNHEE KIM/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2188
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