Design projects#39; repository–a tool FOR DESIGN PROCESS guiding, knowledge capturing and reusing.docVIP

Design projects repository – a tool FOR DESIGN PROCESS guiding, knowledge capturing and reusing Neven Pavkovi? Chair for Product Development and Design Faculty of mechanical engineering naval architecture, Zagreb Croatia neven.pavkovic@fsb.hr Igor Klari? KLEX d.o.o., Zagreb Croatia igor.klaric@klex.hr Mario ?torga Chair for Product Development and Design Faculty of mechanical engineering naval architecture, Zagreb Croatia mario.storga@fsb.hr ABSTRACT Paper presents results of the first phase in development of computer environment for achieving traceability in product development process. Following design process support functions are included in prototype: guiding the inexperienced designers; organizing and cross-linking the digital documentation generated in the design process; evaluating and managing the ongoing projects; building a knowledge base about finished design projects through capturing significant data and rationale; querying the rationale and documents from previous projects. The main structure for representing the design process flow and for indexing the design knowledge is the design plan, which comprises a state – action model of the design process. Based on design plan usage, the authors propose a model of knowledge generation, capture and reuse. Two important issues of design repository usage in practice are briefly discussed – the guidance of novice designers and the balance between potential benefits of proposed system and the extra time required from designers to use it. Those are key factors that affect many issues in preparing the terminology, the usage procedures and the interfaces. Keywords Traceability, design rationale, knowledge capture and reuse, data organisation Introduction In current design support systems, knowledge-level design semantics, such as design intent and design rationale, function and behaviour, etc. are represented in an ad hoc manner (Regli et al., 2004). Most often this information is found in associated design fil