COMPOSER: A Case Based Reasoning System for Engineering Design

. The complex domain of engineering design poses many challenges when attempting to automate the process. The frequent use of past experience by human engineers when solving new problems has led to an interest in the use of case based reasoning (CBR) to help automate engineering design. In order to create a case based reasoning system that is useful for complex domains, the problem of adaptation, or changing existing solutions to meet new problem requirements, must be addressed, as it is critical to ensure that a case based reasoner is more than just a storage and retrieval tool. In engineering design it often occurs that many past experiences must be combined to solve a new problem, and thus the process of adaptation must efficiently and systematically combine information from many sources. We have developed a methodology for case combination that allows its application across a wide range of problems by choosing a constraint satisfaction algorithm to achieve the combination. We have..