An Approach to Capturing Structure, Behavior, and Function of Artifacts in Computer-Aided Design

This paper presents an approach to computer-aided design (CAD) that unites ideas from design with three-dimensional layouts and knowledge engineering. Our goal is to capture the structure, behavior, and function of CAD artifacts. We describe a software tool based on this approach, the conceptual understanding and prototyping (CUP) environment, for capturing the design intent inherent in the design process and authoring design semantics in previously created artifacts. CUP records design ideas, based on functional, geometric, and knowledge-based relationships among components in an electromechanical assembly. This design knowledge is stored using ontologies defined in the XML. The goal of this work is to enable users to navigate intricate product data and design knowledge bases.