On a grammar-based design language that supports automated design generation and creativity

One of the major obstacles towards the realization of automated creative design lies in the restricting design representation frames explicitly or implicitly imposed by common means for design representation. In this paper it is proposed to extend these frames by improving the design representation with a description technique that is more suitable to mimic some of the important cognitive processes taking place in engineering during early design phases. In this context especially the description of topological arrangements or functional dependencies is emphasized. It is shown that the application of grammar techniques known from formal languages is well suited for the development of a compact description language for engineering design objects. This is illustrated in an example for a formal language of truss designs. Furthermore it is investigated how this new design representation approach can support “creative” engineering and where possible future research along these lines can be done.