Towards a Unified Specification Language for Design Knowledge

Computers are fundamental tools to facilitate engineering design. But to provide adequate support, a systematic formalization is needed to express, communicate, and compute product knowledge between agents. This paper introduces the Design Knowledge Specification Language (DKSL), a knowledge representation (KR) language tuned to the engineering domain. It blends aspects of both specification and programming languages, allowing the definition, transmission, and computation of product knowledge for design process support. An overview of DKSL is presented, including its theoretical underpinnings, as well as a discussion of how DKSL can be applied to support design processes. Providing a rigorous formalization of product knowledge can significantly improve design processes.