Shape Grammars: A Method and Representation for Product Design

该补助金提供资金，以支持形状语法的理论和实践发展，以计算方式模拟消费产品的生成和结构。 该理论将提供丰富的 为该工程应用创建形式和功能语法的基础;特定产品语法将提供快速生成新产品或重新创建已知产品的方法。 最初，将完成生成咖啡机的语法。 将执行咖啡机的制造分析，并与语法规则和语法本身相关。 将为新产品类别生成两到三个额外的语法，并将追求其成本性能和实现。 随着语法的完成，将对由此产生的产品如何映射到企业形象进行调查。 同样，一旦制造成本分析完成，将执行由语法生成的产品设计空间的探索。 通过形状语法将形式和功能相关的理论进步将在整个项目中继续。 在当今竞争激烈的环境中，产品设计受到快速上市和独一无二的设计的推动。 随着众多产品的出现，一家公司发现在整个产品线上保持其企业形象的必要性和困难。 从长远来看，如果没有计算辅助，公司要跟上消费者的需求并不容易。 成功完成本提案将表明，形状语法是一种计算表示，以简洁直观的描述方式模拟产品设计的重要特征;它们也是一种使用表示来指导设计生成的手段，限制设计范围以保持其可控性，但允许在设计过程中自由表达。 这项工作将扩展现有的理论，将产品的特点，实施可用的语法理论，并追求应用的理论设计的产品。 其结果将是一个更详细的了解如何形式语法可以建模的设计过程，快速生成新颖的设计概念，并提供更好的反馈给设计师和公司如何通过计算机自动化模型所需的特性到产品。

This grant provides funding to support the theoretical and practical development of shape grammars to computationally model the generation and structure of consumer products. The theory will provide a rich foundation for the creation of grammars of form and function for this engineering application; the specific product grammars will provide a means to rapidly generate new products or recreate known products. Initially, a grammar to generate coffee makers will be completed. A manufacturing analysis of the coffee makers will be performed and related to the grammar rules and the grammar itself will be implemented. Two to three additional grammars for new product classes will be generated and their cost performance and implementations will also be pursued. As the grammars are completed, investigations into how the resulting products map onto corporate identity will be performed. As well, once the manufacturing cost analyses are completed, explorations of the product design space generated by the grammar will be performed. Theoretical advancements relating form and function through shape grammars will continue throughout the project. Product design in today's competitive environment is pushed by fast time-to-market and one-of-a-kind design. As the multitude of products emerge, a company finds the need and difficulty in maintaining their corporate identity across the product lines. Long term there is no easy way for companies to keep up with this consumer demand without computational assistance. Successful completion of this proposal will show that shape grammars are a computational representation that models important characteristics of product design in a concise and intuitively descriptive manner; they are also a means to use the representation to direct the generation of designs, limiting the scope of design to keep it controllable, yet allowing freedom for expression within the design process. The work will extend existing theory to incorporate product characteristics, implement the theory in usable grammars, and pursue application of the theory to the design of products. The result will be a more detailed understanding of how formal grammars can model the design process, rapidly generate novel design concepts, and give better feedback to a designer and corporation on how to model desired characteristics into a product through computer automation.