The Representation of Function in Computer-based Design

This paper proposes a standardized representation of function for use by the research community, industry, and eventually commercial software vendors. This includes schemata (information models) for representation of function and associated flows, as well as an initial attempt at developing taxonomies of functions and flows. The objective of the latter effort is to generate taxonomies that are as small as possible, yet generic enough to allow modeling of a broad variety of engineering artifacts. This representation is intended to provide a generic infrastructure that will facilitate the capture and exchange of function information among researchers at present, and eventually in industry by contributing to interoperability between design systems, be they commercial or developed internally within a company.