Research On Ontology Based Collaborative Design Of Furniture Product

Chinese furniture industry has made great achievements in the past twenty years. Both the industry scale and the production value are in the front of the whole world now. However, its design innovation ability remains a shortcoming, and the informatization level is still low. The modernization of a furniture enterprise has two kernel contents, the first is to upgrade management pattern continuously to keep an enterprise vigorous, the second is to improve products design efficiency to make an enterprise run with high efficiency and keep it competitive in the market. Thus, researches on advanced design methods and technologies will definitely accelerate the development of furniture enterprises and enhance their core competition ability.According to above background, this paper presents a new kind of design method ontology based furniture product coordination design. In the course of modern informatization, furniture enterprises have improved their production efficiency and accelerated information transfer. But at the same time there are some problems such as management confusion, knowledge dispersion and conflicts among systems etc. The design courses of modern furniture products involve many aspects of knowledge, and the attendance of personnel from different fields. Coordination is a real needs to provide excellent modern products design. Originated from philosophy, ontology is a kind of precise description of essence and conception, aiming to describe those hidden (or implicit) information precisely. The presentation of ontology based furniture product coordination design can solve problems of knowledge description and knowledge organization system inside an enterprise or among enterprises, it can also solve system isomerism problems among different enterprises, and strongly support the coordination design of furniture products.According to the characteristics of furniture products design, this paper researches ontology based furniture products coordination design mainly from three aspects as below:(1) Furniture products conceptual design. Conceptual design is a design phase of describing design problems and provide different solutions in form of schemes, it is an important phase in furniture products development. Nowadays, most products design knowledge located in different places and different design systems. With research of ontology on conceptual design, we can solve problems of expression of different knowledge in design phase, and problems of knowledge query, share and reuse among different systems. This paper presents information modeling frame of furniture products design at first, which consists of three parts:function model, principle model and structure model. Then, it defines class and attribute of function model, principle model and structure model respectively. Finally, it develops a conceptual design system using ontology development tool Protege. This system provides designers with access of function, principle and structure information, and manages huge amount of information, facilitate designers to access design information from different angles of view in different abstract levels.(2) Furniture products package design. Package design of furniture products should consider environment rules and policies of some countries or organizations, such as UN environment scheme. This can only be reflected in special package design projects. This paper presents an ontology based solution, as ontology can clearly define specifications or particular requirements involved in business rules, designers can query useful data and hidden information of furniture package design projects using furniture package ontology developed by this paper. This paper selects Methontology method to develop furniture package ontology. This method can objectively describe late steps. It also presents a lifecycle conception based on prototype evolution. To create ontology with Methontology method, there are several phases including management, specification description, conceptualization, formalization, execution and maintenance. With furniture package ontology developed by this paper, designers can not only effectively organize package design courses of furniture enterprises, they can also clearly describe useful business rules and clients'particular requirements involved in furniture package design, and promote design efficiency.(3) Ontology based furniture products coordination design. This paper presents a kind of knowledge management method facing furniture design field and matching furniture products design knowledge scenario. By analyses basic conceptions and characteristics of furniture design knowledge, it creates furniture design knowledge ontology frame and arithmetic mechanism. Using furniture design cases as the carrier, it provides designers with explicit and implicit design knowledge to facilitate coordination design. This management method can be divided in three phases:conceptualization, query and knowledge reuse, it aims to improve design scheme quality and creating efficiency. This paper develops a furniture cases design management system with PHP and XML technology, with it designers can acquire furniture products cases knowledge and evaluate design cases, thus promote coordination among designers. Finally, this paper develops a furniture products design coordination system with technologies including PHP and MySQL, etc. It has functions including user registration, design resources query, online communication, cases voting, etc. This system guarantees designers to communicate and interact with clients and enterprises in time, carry out products development and design efficiently, thus enterprises can shorten products development period and expands their market share.