Abstract
We report on the development of a knowledge representation model, which is based on the SHARED object model reported in Shared Workspaces for Computer-Aided Collaborative Engineering (Wong, A. and Sriram, D., Technical Report, IESL 93-06, Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, MIT, March, 1993) and Research in Engineering Design (Wong, A. and Sriram, D., SHARED: An Information Model for Cooperative Product Development, 1993, Fall, 21-39). Our current model is implemented as a layered scheme, that incorporates both an evolving artifact and its associated design process. To represent artifacts as they evolve, we define objects recursively without a pre-defined granularity on this recursive decomposition. This eliminates the need for translations between levels of abstraction in the design process. The SHARED model extends traditional OOP in three ways: (1) by allowing explicit relationship classes with inheritance hierarchies; (2) by permitting constraints to be associated with objects and relationships; and (3) by comparing 'similar' objects at three different levels (form, function and behavior). Five primitive objects define the design process: goal, plan, specification, decision and context. Goal objects achieve function, introduce constraints, introduce new artifacts or modify existing ones, and create subgoals. Plan objects order goals and link a product hierarchy to a process hierarchy. Specification objects define user inputs as constraints. Decision objects relate goals to user decisions and context objects describe the design context. Operators that are applied to design objects collectively form a representation of the design process for a given context. The representation is robust enough to effectively model four design paradigms [described in Journal of CAD (Gorti, S. and Sriram, R. D., Symbol to Form Mapping: a Framework for Conceptual Design, 1996, 28(11), 853-870)]: top-down decomposition, stepwise refinement, bottom-up composition and constraint propagation. To demonstrate this, we represent the designs of two TV remote controllers in the SHARED architecture. The example reveals that certain aspects of artifact knowledge are essentially contextindependent and that this representation can be a foundation for robust knowledge-based systems in design.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 489-501 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | CAD Computer Aided Design |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1998 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We gratefully acknowledge members of the DICE group at MIT, in particular Feniosky Peña-Mora, for many useful discussions with us. Gerard Kim was supported by the National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateship. Ashok Gupta was a visiting scientist from the Dept. of Civil Eng., IIT, Delhi to MIT, and was supported by a Indo-US Science and Technology Fellowship from the Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of India and the United States Agency for International Development. Funding for the DICE project came from the IESL affiliates program and a NSF PYI Award No. DDM-8957464, with matching grants from NTT Data, Japan and Digital Equipment Corporation, USA. We thank Robert Allen and J. William Murdock for pointing out several errors and rectifying these errors in the manuscript. We would also like to thank Y. Narahari for his comments on the final draft of the paper. The object and the design process models were developed by Sriram and his students at MIT, and later refined by Gerry Kim at NIST. The authors' names are in alphabetical order.
Funding Information:
Gerard Jounghyun Kim is currently an assistant professor in computer science and engineering at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH). Prior to joining POSTECH in 1995, he had worked as a computer scientist with support from the US National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for two years at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Dr. Kim's research interests include various topics in computer-aided design such as intelligent design, design reuse, and virtual CAD user interfaces. Kim received a B.S. (electrical and computer engineering, 1987) from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS (computer engineering, 1989) and a Ph.D. (computer science, 1994) from the University of Southern California.
Funding Information:
Ram D. Sriram currently leads the engineering design technologies group in the Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, MEL, at NIST. Prior to that he was an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT and was instrumental in setting up the Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory. At MIT, Sriram initiated the DICE project, which was one of the pioneering projects in collaborative engineering. He has co-authored or authored more than 100 papers, books, and reports in computer-aided engineering, including twelve books. In 1989, he was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, USA. Sriram received a B. Tech (1980) from I.I.T., Madras, India, an MS (1981) and a Ph.D. from Carnegie–Mellon University (1986).
Keywords
- Design
- Design process
- Knowledge-base
- Object-oriented model
- Ontology
- Representation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Science Applications
- Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering