ABSTRACT
To measure distance in buildings as direct straight lines is clearly very approximate, since in many cases these lines will cut diagonally across a plan, and such routes could never in reality be followed. The rectangular measure splits the distance into two components at right angles. The rectangular distance for all the building forms is between roughly 80% and 90% of the real figure. The vertices of the network correspond to two different types of point in the plan: to the locations as marked by their centroids, and to the junctions in the system of horizontal and vertical routes. As the number of vertices in the network increases the process becomes more tedious. The chapter presents student exercises from the Ulm School of Design. The very elegant network drawings made by students at Ulm for the plan of their own Design School give an idea of the size of problem of finding shortest routes for a medium-sized building.
