Research Initiation: Object-Oriented Representation and Knowledge-Based Processing of Design Standards for Design

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The aspects of design are increasingly being supported by computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems. Most design activity is subject to the satisfaction of at least one design standard. CAE systems are most commonly developed by interpreting and reforming the provisions of standard into assignment statements and then hard-coding them into the system. Such systems are inflexible (valid for one standard only), frequently invalidated by changes in the standard, and subject to misinterpretation errors. If, instead, the standard is declaratively represented, and then presented to the CAE system to be manipulated (using tools provided by a knowledge-based standards processing system), invalidation and misinterpretation would be lessened. The design system would also be more flexible, in that it could be made valid for another design standard by supplying the system with the representation of that standard. A prototype of such a standards processor was developed in previous research by this principal investigator. This prototype proved that standards could be separated from their usage, but it still requires much more research and development to be usable in computer-aided engineering system development. The objectives of this research are to completely recast the declarative representation of design standards as an object-oriented model, and to expand and modify the knowledge- based standards processor to address insufficiencies in the prototype.