A Hybrid System Approach of Case-Based Reasoning and Knowledge-Based for Product Form Design

Product form design is a typical complex problem- solving process which is an ill-structured domain in terms of the design knowledge. This design problem often lacks the exact formula for representation, and highly depends upon human designers´ past experiences. This paper presents a hybrid system approach of case-based reasoning and knowledge-based for developing new product that can effectively support all the steps in the design process from storing past cases, through retrieving similar cases, to adapting the retrieved case for the new product. Within this approach, a pattern of product form design with CBR is presented, and the method for the case representation and structure is described and the key arithmetic for evaluating the similarity between and the past case and new situation are introduced. Then, a knowledge-based adaptation method is presented for the specific problem situation and structure of domain knowledge support is introduced. On the basis of the approach, a computer aided product design system - CBID is developed to improve the ability and quality of product form design of 7 Chinese corporations.