Imagination Support for the Mechanical Product Design using Modules by Stepwise Refinement of Design Processes

本研究的目的是在机械产品的初步设计阶段支持设计师的想象力。当设计师在初始阶段制定第一个粗略的设计方案时，他/她决定了产品功能部件的粗略形状和粗略尺寸，并绘制了产品或原型的草图。为了获得产品的最终详细设计，设计师以不断增加的细节水平重复上述设计过程。在初步设计阶段，重要的是让设计师自由想象，不受先入为主的限制。传统的CAD系统不支持设计师的这种发散性思维过程。在本研究中，设计师的想象力的过程中提供了各种设计计划，自动创建的模块布局的支持。一个机械产品由若干功能模块组成，每个模块至少有一个基本功能。提出了一种从机械产品功能需求到功能模块的部署机制，即模块库。一个模块库由三个类组成：功能需求类、基本功能类和模块类。在模块类中，描述了每个模块的布局约束。机械模块，具有基本功能，以满足产品的要求，选择和组合使用模块库。通过对每个功能模块组合应用遗传算法来自动生成各种模块布局。设计师根据这些布局知道产品的粗略形象。通过使用连接部件连接模块来获得完整的产品结构。此外，商业上可用的机制分析软件被应用于确定所生成的布局是否满足产品的功能要求。一个拟议的系统的试用实施适用于玩具机器人的建设工具包。

The objective of this research is to support the designer's imagination at the preliminary design stage of mechanical products. When the designer makes a first rough design plan at the initial stage, he/she decides on the rough shape and rough dimensions of the functional components of the product, and draws a rough sketch of the product or prototypes. To get the final detailed design of the product, the designer repeats the above design process at an ever increasing level of detail. At the preliminary design stage, it is important for the designer to imagine freely without constraints of preconception. Traditional CAD systems do not support such a divergent thinking process of the designer. In this research, the designer's imagination process is supported by providing various design plans which are automatically created from module layouts. A mechanical product consists of several functional modules, and each module has at least one primitive function. As a mechanism of deployment from functional requirement of a mechanical product to functional modules, a module library is proposed. A module library consists of three classes : the functional requirement class, the primitive function class and the module class. In the module class, each module's layout constraints are described. Mechanical modules which have basic functions to satisfy requirements for the product are chosen and combined using a module library. Various module layouts are automatically generated by applying a genetic algorithm to each of the functional module combinations. The designer knows the rough image of the product based on these layouts. The complete product structure is obtained by connecting modules using connecting parts. Furthermore, a commercially available mechanism-analysis software is applied for determining whether the generated layouts fulfill the functional requirements of the product. A trial implementation of a proposed system is applied to a building kit for toy robots.