Collaborative Research: Creating a Computational Theory for Conceptual Design

这个项目结合了新的设计表达和计算方法，使计算概念设计。设计表示和计算方法利用计算能力和信息检索推理算法的不断增加。 描述性的方法，存储的知识，和算法推理提供了一个计算理论的概念设计，可以大大有利于设计师在困难的阶段的概念生成的潜力。基本的主题是基于功能的综合，约束管理和状态空间搜索的组合和形式化。这项工作的主要目标是创建一个概念设计的计算理论，可以计算设计方案。概念生成活动是工程设计的重要基础之一。直到最近，设计师在概念设计过程中唯一可用的资源是个人经验和先天能力。虽然在过去的三十年里，设计师的资源有了显着的进步，但计算设计工具和概念设计方法之间仍然缺乏连续性。许多概念设计的形式化方法还没有实现为计算算法。这项研究将开发表示和计算方法，使设计概念，从所需产品的功能描述创建。 本研究借由设计知识储存库与概念产生器的开发，延伸目前对功能与形式关系的理解，并将其编码化。此外，新颖的元件表示法可让电脑判断元件的相容性，进而合成概念变体。此外，这项工作是有用的比较人类的设计行为，因为它是建立在常用的设计实践。这项工作是基本的和实际的性质。因此，更广泛的影响超越了出版物，延伸到教育，工程实践和研究中所产生的知识，方法和工具的使用。例如，学生将能够使用概念生成器来创建解决方案，因为他们的经验有限，否则他们可能不会开发。这些解决方案将使学生接触到不同的学科和工程和科学领域。这项研究的结果以类似的方式影响了行业和研究。在这两种情况下，研究都可以用来产生更广泛的解决方案，比没有研究的情况下要快得多。

This project combines new design representations and computational approaches to enable computational conceptual design. The design representations and computational methods leverage the constant increases in computational power and information retrieval reasoning algorithms. Descriptive methods, stored knowledge, and algorithmic reasoning provide the potential for a computational theory of conceptual design that could greatly benefit the designer during difficult stages of concept generation. The underlying theme is the combination and formalization of function-based synthesis, constraint management and state space search. The primary objective of the work is to create a computational theory of conceptual design that can compute design alternatives. The computation will result in a comprehensive space of concept variants and search it for feasible candidates.The activity of concept generation is one of the cornerstones of engineering design. Until recently, the only resources available to a designer during conceptual design were personal experiences and innate abilities. While the designer's resources have advanced significantly in the last three decades, there is still a lack of continuity between computational design tools and conceptual design methods. Many formal methods of conceptual design have yet to be realized as computational algorithms. This research will develop representations and computational methods that allow design concepts to be created from the functional description of a needed product. Through the development of a design knowledge repository and a concept generator that uses the stored knowledge, this research extends the current understanding of the relationship between function and form and codifies it. Also, novel component representations enable computers to determine component compatibility and thus synthesize a concept variant. Additionally, this work is useful for comparison to human design behaviors, as it is built on commonly used design practices.This work is both basic and practical in nature. Thus, the broader impacts extend beyond publication to the usage of the resultant knowledge, methods and tools in education, engineering practice and research. For example, students will be able to use the concept generator to create solutions that, because of their limited experience, they might otherwise not have developed. These solutions will expose students to different disciplines and engineering and scientific domains. The results of this research impact industry and research in a similar manner. In both cases, the research can be used to generate a broader array of solutions much more quickly than would have been possible without it.