A multi-relational and interactive model for supporting the design process in the conceptual phase

The article presents an interactive model that increases the possibilities of exploration during the design process, increasing the number of ways to guide and build the design alternatives. The model considers a knowledge representation, based on the function-behaviour-structure framework that increases the number of relations between the representation levels. With this model, the designer can explore and converge the design space by means of rules that connect the abstraction levels. The model begins the synthesis from any level of abstraction; it explores the knowledge by means of pop-up menus, which can be freely selected by the user and it makes it possible to go back to higher levels of abstraction during the synthesis. The paper starts with a brief survey of some of the most significant functional synthesis models and the knowledge schemes used, and then it describes the proposed model and its application to a design case. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved