User interface for specification language for case-based mechanical design

Abstract

AbstractCase-based design (CBD) systems aim to solve a design problem by tailoring previously solved design problems to the current problem. Designers' specifications are used for indexing the knowledge base of the CBD system to retrieve an appropriate design case. Menu-based systems fail to capture designers' specifications effectively due to lack of expressiveness, while natural language systems are too immature to satisfy the goal. This paper presents the development of a graphical user interface (GUI) to implement a mechanical design specification language (MDSL) (Stelling, 1994) used to facilitate indexing in case-based mechanical design. The specification language is context-free and hence computable. It represents mechanical design knowledge in a (feature):(attribute) format suitable for indexing. An augmented transition network (ATN) parser is built using the grammar of the specification language. The parser provides syntactic as well as semantic checks. It also has capabilities to expand grammar and to adapt to a specific user domain. A graphical front end to the parser assists and guides the user through the specification language syntax in entering the design specifications. Provisions have been made to expand or edit the language grammar and vocabulary. The ATN parser was implemented in Common Lisp and the graphical user interface was written using the Gold Hill Windows Toolkit. Sample user interactions with the interface and screen dumps of the GUI are included.