A Design Process Model for Handling Multiple-Design-Object Models.

Abstract

An intelligent CAD system aims at serving a designer as an intelligent, integrated design environment. For building such a system, development of a large scale knowledge base is necessary. To do so, design knowledge must be systematically formalized, made computable, and organized. Design knowledge has two categories ; i.e., design object knowledge and design process knowledge. In our previous reports, we have formalized a computable design process model to represent design process knowledge and the concept of a metamodel dealing with multiple design object models. This paper proposes a framework to achieve a harmonized combination of these two. In this framework, the computable design process model navigates the metamodel mechanism to generate and modify models of the design object. We describe a prototype system and illustrate an example of ship design.