Intelligent Knowledge Bases of CAD Environments: The Hybrid System “KANON”

The CAD-/CAM-area can be seen as an interdisciplinary field between the mechanical engineers and the computer scientists. Regarding this development the software-engineering aspect has been dominant up to now on the part of computer science. The reason why is that in the meantime already good and refined systems exist on the market (CATIA,CADAM, CAEDS, CADIS, ICEM). But the integration capability of such systems has hardly been taken into consideration. Only since CIM‡ and the combining of CAD-/CAM-systems have been discussed one tries to integrate these systems. Two fundamental integration approaches can be differentiated: A)Extension of the existing sytems for universal interfaces which enable their integration;B)Development of new systems in which the integration aspect is part of the system.In this connection the integration of AI-methods and existing database system-software-engineering- up to information system approaches offers — in our opinion - suitable ways of solutions which shall be explained afterwards.Starting out from chapter 1, which describes the problems of conventional CAD-/CAM-systems, the hybrid system KANON with its application possibilities in a CIM-environment is introduced in chapter 2, so that useful application possibilities of a KBS regarding the development and realization of CAD-/CAM-systems can be explained in chapter 3.