GCDK: Generation and Conservation of Design Knowledge
Project GCDK is a collaboration between the AI Branch at NASA Ames Research Center and the
Center for Design
Research at
Stanford University.
This project is researching tools and methodologies for modeling,
indexing and retrieval of design information during a design process.
These tools and methods will be integrated with the
Engineering Design Notebook being developed in the SHARE
project at the Center for Design Research.
Contents
vmacs and EDN are a trademark of the Performing Graphics
Company.
The core objective of this projects are:
- capture,
- formalization/modeling,
- representation/indexing
- reuse/retrieval
of knowledge generated during a design process. Our hypothesis is
that, design knowledge conservation (capture, representation,
reasoning and retrieval) will be far less costly than re-inventing
comparable knowledge.
These objectives are being achieved by developing tools and
methodologies which can be integrated within the computational and
social working environment of industrial designers. Particular
attention is paid to have this integration in a manner so that the
capture, indexing and modeling happens during the design process
rather than after it.
Research in this project has three parallel efforts,
- Design Methodology Research,
- Computational Tool Development and
- Real Design
These parallel efforts ensures our results and keeps the
research grounded in reality through constant feedback from designers.
The activity of design methodology research is aimed at better
understanding the design process and the information needs of
designers. It results in frameworks and methods which can guide the
development of computational tools. There tools are then made
available to designers and the usage of the tools is closely studied
and analyzed. The results from these user studies are used to inform
the further development and refinement of the tools. The publications
below cover in detail the results from our research over the past
three years.
- Baya, V.; Gevins, J.; Baudin, C.; Mabogunje, A.; Toye, G.; Leifer,
L.; "An Experimental Study of Design
Information Reuse" , In Proceedings of the 4th International
Conference on Design Theory and Methodology, ASME, Sept. 13-16,
Scottsdale, Arizona, pp 141-147, 1992.
- Baudin, Catherine; Kedar, Smadar; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya,
Vinod; "Question-based Acquisition
of Conceptual Indices for Multimedia Design Documentation" , In
proceedings of the 11th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
AAAI-93, Washington D.C., pp 452-458, July 1993.
- Baudin, Catherine; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya, Vinod; "Using Device Models to Facilitate
the Retrieval of Multimedia Design Information" , In proceedings
of the 13th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
Chambery, France, pp 1237-1243, August 29-September 2,1993.
- Baudin, Catherine; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya, Vinod; Mabogunje,
Ade; "Dedal: Using Domain
Concepts to Index Engineering Design Information" , In proceedings
of the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society,
Bloomington, Indiana, pp 702-707, July 19-August 1, 1992.
- Mabogunje, A., "Harnessing
Questions in Mechanical Design", Engineer Thesis, Stanford
University, Stanford, California, July 1993.
Vinod Baya