An experience of representing knowledge and data in mechanical design using Smalltalk-80

Abstract

The experience of representing design knowledge and data in developing an intelligent design system for mechanical devices using the object oriented programming language --- Smalltalk-80 is summarized in this paper. Many object oriented programming techniques, especially the representation of inheritance and class-instance relations, are used for representing the design knowledge and data within the system. The characteristics of Smalltalk-80, including its rapid prototyping and large library properties, make it an excellent tool for this application. It is concluded from this work that object oriented programming language is a good tool for modeling design objects and for representing design knowledge.