Knowledge representation tool for conceptual development of product designs

The systematic design process method is a step-wise procedure which serves as a general framework for product design. This model characterizes the design process as consisting of a series of four interconnected stages. These stages, given according to the order of their appearance in the process, are specification and planning, conceptual design, embodiment design, and detailed design. The tool which is presented utilizes an object-based architecture known as the system entity structure and a function-based model for decomposing tractable sub-systems. These two models have been combined in a way which enables their use as a knowledge representation tool for conceptual design and as part of an integrated product development architecture. The basic procedure involved consists of establishing an overall product definition, using the definition to establish hierarchical system structure, and describing basic sub-systems of this structure in terms of a set of primitive functions. A ranked set of candidate conceptual design solutions are provided as the tool´s output. These solutions are generated through use of an expert system to select viable components of the system structure