Structuring Knowledge of Life-Cycle Consequences for Supporting Concurrent Design Exploration

This paper is concerned with the development of a model for knowledge of consequences which can support provident reasoning design. The work is focused on part design synthesis decision making so as to support individual designers engaged in life-cycle design exploration. The emerging model is one based on structured relationships between a number of aspects which are considered to be the source of life-cycle consequences, namely Features [F], Parameter values [V], Material [M], Constraints [C] and Process [P] factors. The approach is seen to be a framework for the systematization of domain knowledge which can subsequently be employed in a Knowledge Intensive CAD system for supporting concurrent design of components. Examples in the approach are drawn from the domain of injection moulded plastic components.