Abstract: Minority residence is an important part of the Chinese national culture.However,the inheritance and development of traditional minority architecture show a trend of decline under the current national amalgamation background.So,it is of great significance to carry on the digital preservation of the minority nationality dwellings with the 3D modeling technology.The Miao dwelling architecture is ingenious and complicated because it has a unique structure of the stilted building.This characteristic brings difficulty to rules modeling.Therefore,this study took CityEngine as the modeling platform,and constructed the rules of the pillars of the first floor,the main house of the second floor and the Xieshan-style roof through intelligently combining the CGA functions of extrusion,splitting,translation,etc. Finally,the rules based 3D model of the Miao typical buildings were implemented.With these rules,the residential style can be dynamically changed,and ethnic village can be rapidly generated.The results show that the 3D modeling method of complex ethnic houses based on CGA rules is feasible,which provides a convenient way for the digital preservation of the minority residences.

Key words: CGA, Miao residences, 3D modeling