Knowledge-based engineering design, modeling and representation

Engineering design concerns the selection and interconnection of various physical objects to accomplish given functional goals. The result of design activity is a description that may be represented in many different ways. Conceptual design refers to activities that take place prior to detailed simulation and physical design. As part of conceptual design, configurational design determines complete sets of components or parts and their relationships such that the resulting assemblies satisfy all necessary requirements and constraints.; This dissertation presents a new approach for configurational design in terms of decomposing design knowledge and using it for the design process. The approach includes the Provider/Consumer model to represent design objects and dictionary decomposition for the design process. A dictionary as used here is a representation scheme developed for the knowledge base and knowledge management of the Provider/Consumer model. This representation allows the different kinds of design knowledge typically used in a configuration task to be decomposed and implemented in one of three dictionaries. First, design knowledge about the different available components and their properties is represented in the Part/Property dictionary. Second, design knowledge about relationships between components is represented in the Function/Property dictionary. Third, design knowledge about constraints on properties or relations between components is represented in the Function/Property and Property-Decomposition dictionaries. Finally, design knowledge about the user's preferences on how the design is configured is represented in the Function/Property dictionary.; This dictionary representation can be consistently applied to the design process and its implementation. Each dictionary is implemented with a user interface to capture and manage design knowledge, and is used as a knowledge source for the design process. The design process is performed by a mapping procedure between dictionaries that is guided by the contents of the dictionaries when the configurations are built. The process includes part selection, constraint satisfaction, and generation of all possible configurations. In order to verify the feasibility of this approach, it has been applied to several test cases.