Design knowledge

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There is a large body of knowledge that designers call upon and use during the design process to match the ever-increasing complexity of design problems.^[1] Design knowledge can be classified into two categories:^[2] product knowledge and design process knowledge.

Product Knowledge

Product knowledge has been fairly studied and a number of modeling techniques have been developed. Most of them are tailored to specific products or specific aspects of the design activities. For example, geometric modeling is used mainly for supporting detailed design, while knowledge modeling is working for supporting conceptual designs. Based on these techniques, a design repository project at NIST attempts to model three fundamental facets of an artifact representation:^[3][4] the physical layout of the artifact (form), an indication of the overall effect that the artifact creates (function), and a causal account of the operation of the artifact (behavior). The recent NIST research effort towards the development of the basic foundations of the next generation of CAD systems suggested a core representation for design information called the NIST core product model (CPM) ^[5] and a set of derived models defined as extensions of the CPM (e.g.^[6][7]). The NIST core product model has been developed to unify and integrate product or assembly information. The CPM provides a base-level product model that is: not tied to any vendor software; open; non-proprietary; expandable; independent of any one product development process; capable of capturing the engineering context that is most commonly shared in product development activities. The core model focuses on artifact representation including function, form, behavior, material, physical and functional decompositions, and relationships among these concepts. The entity-relationship data model influences the model heavily; accordingly, it consists of two sets of classes, called object and relationship, equivalent to the UML class and association class, respectively.

Design Process Knowledge

Design process knowledge can be described in two levels: design activities and design rationale.^[8] The importance of representation for design rationale has been recognized but it is a more complex issue that extends beyond artifact function. The design structure matrix (DSM) has been used for modeling design process (activities) and some related research efforts have been conducted. For example, a web-based prototype system for modeling the product development process using a multi-tiered DSM is developed at MIT. However, few research endeavors have been found on design rationale.^[9][10]

Representation Scenarios

In terms of representation scenarios, design knowledge can also be categorized into off-line and on-line knowledge. Design process knowledge can be categorized into ontologies.

References