Research Initiation: A Graph-Based Representation and Language of Features for Design Innovation

设计研究中的一个主要障碍是描述设计问题、解释设计并识别设计修改以支持设计创新的表示和语言。作为解决这一问题的重要一步，将开发一种基于图形的表示法，它将物体的基本几何描述抽象到可以在计算上修改和解释物体的水平。预期图形不仅表示身体几何形状的抽象模型，而且还建模物理本构关系和行为设计约束。该图可以基于优化信息进行扩展，对设计创新过程进行建模。然后在图形表示上定义特征语言以通过计算来描述和解释设计；该语言将建立在图形的顶部以识别几何表示中建模的特征并相应地调整设计约束。这项研究是一个长期目标的一部分，该目标是创建一个设计环境，该环境可以在不同抽象级别对设计问题进行推理，以支持快速生成解决方案概念。

A major obstacle in design research is a representation and language to describe a design problem, interpret the design, and recognize modifications to the design to support design innovation. As a significant step toward solving this problem, a graph-based representation will be developed which abstracts essential geometric descriptions of a body to a level where modification and interpretation of the body becomes computationally feasible. The anticipated graph not only represents an abstract model of the geometry of the body, but also models physical constitutive relations and behavioral design constraints. The graph can be expanded based on optimization information, modeling the process of design innovation. A language of features is then defined on the graph representation to describe and interpret the design computationally; the language will be built on top of the graph to recognize features modeled in the geometric representation and adjust design constraints accordingly. This research is part of a long-term goal to create a design environment which can reason about a design problem at various levels of abstraction to support the rapid generation of solution concepts.