Shape Grammars: A Method and Representation for Product Design

这项拨款提供资金支持形状语法的理论和实践发展，以计算模拟消费产品的生成和结构。该理论将为该工程应用的形式和功能语法的创建提供丰富的基础；特定的产品语法将提供一种快速生成新产品或重新创建已知产品的方法。首先，将完成生成咖啡机的语法。将对咖啡机进行制造分析，并与语法规则和语法本身相关。将为新产品类生成两到三个额外的语法，并将研究它们的性价比和实现。语法完成后，将对结果产品如何映射到企业标识进行调查。同样，一旦完成制造成本分析，将执行由语法生成的产品设计空间的探索。通过形状语法的形式和功能的理论进步将贯穿整个项目。在当今竞争激烈的环境中，产品设计是由快速上市和独一无二的设计推动的。随着大量产品的出现，公司发现在整个产品线中维护其企业身份的需求和困难。从长远来看，如果没有计算机辅助，公司很难跟上消费者的需求。该提案的成功完成将表明形状语法是一种计算表示，它以简洁和直观的描述性方式模拟产品设计的重要特征；它们也是使用表征来指导设计生成的一种手段，限制设计的范围以保持其可控，但在设计过程中允许自由表达。这项工作将扩展现有的理论，将其纳入产品特征，以可用的语法实现理论，并将理论应用于产品设计。其结果将是更详细地了解形式化语法如何建模设计过程，快速生成新颖的设计概念，并就如何通过计算机自动化将所需特征建模到产品中向设计师和公司提供更好的反馈。

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.