Memory Driven Feature-Based Design

The act of design is a critical operation in the whole train of events of manufacturing. Improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of the design process would certainly have a major effect on the entire manufacturing operation as a whole. Engineering design seems to be an admixture of synthesis and analysis activities with synthesis dominating the conceptual design and embodiment design phases of the activity and analysis dominating the problem definition and detailing phases of the activity. In addition, in nearly all phases of the design procedure, the designer often finds it helpful to be able to recollect many other previous designs or pertinent portions of such similar designs and to be able to visualize or sketch variations on a theme and to be able to evaluate those comparatively. This is especially true for circumstances where the person has not had extensive personal experience in this matter. The research reported on in this document focuses on that aspect of design and planning. Namely, how stores of public handbook type knowledge and memory of private episodic knowledge can be and should be used effectively in combination with computer-based systems, in support of designers and fabricators.... Memory, Neural networks, Features, Computer aided design.