Engineering Research Equipment Grant: Design Fusion

该项目的目标是为基于计算机的系统生成理论和技术，该系统将有助于创建满足其功能、成本和质量要求的机械设计，同时满足下游活动施加的限制。主要研究人员将创建一个设计系统，通过使用透视图和特征，将机械设计的功能需求与强加于设计的整个生命周期的约束融合在一起。该项目基于三个基本概念：(1)通过使用来自多个角度的视图来集成生命周期关注，其中每个角度代表不同的生命周期关注，例如制造，分销，维护等；(2)通过使用特征在不同的抽象层次和粒度上表示设计空间，其中特征是从任何角度表征设计的属性；(3)利用约束条件生成和修剪设计空间。设计融合是将这三者融合在一起的统一概念。从根本上说，设计融合结合了启发式搜索和约束导向推理以及基于特征的鲁棒表示，这样生命周期知识就可以用于生成、约束和测试设计决策。

The goal of this project is to generate theories and techniques for a computer-based system that will assist in creating mechanical designs that meet their function, cost, and quality requirements while simultaneously meeting the constraints imposed by downstream activities. The principal investigators will create a design system that fuses the functional requirements of a mechanical design with the constraints that are imposed on the design throughout its life-cycle through the use of perspectives and features. This project is founded on three underlying concepts: (1) integrating life-cycle concerns through the use of views from multiple perspectives, where each perspective represents a different life-cycle concern such as manufacture, distribution, maintenance, etc.; (2) representing the design space at different levels of abstraction and granularity through the use of features, where features are the attributes that characterize a design from the viewpoint of any perspective; and (3) generating and pruning the design space through the use of constraints. Design fusion is the unifying concept that integrates these three. Fundamentally, design fusion combines heuristic search and constraint directed reasoning with a robust representation based on features so that life-cycle knowledge can be used to generate, constrain, and test design decisions.