Proceedings of ICAD2000 First International Conference on Axiomatic Design

This paper proposes an architecture for a design knowledge database that is aimed at providing a substrate for automation in the engineering design process. We address issues of knowledge representation, knowledge source, and design processes that make use of this knowledge. The knowledge representation is based on the Axiomatic Design view of design as a top-down hierarchical problem solving process. Every step in the decomposition process is regarded as a building block, and is an element of the database. The design step is thus a unit of design knowledge; it may sometimes be a physical component, feature or parameter, but it can be any aggregation of hardware, software and disembodied abstract concepts. A design step primarily contains knowledge describing modifiable parameters, physical behavior and interfaces. All information is stored in a mathematical form, in attempt to alleviate many of the ambiguity and incoherence problems associated with earlie