Integration of Knowledge in Synthesis Process

In this paper, we discuss what is knowledge for synthesis and how knowledge is used in synthesis process. Variety of knowledge is crucial in synthesis process like design. Such variety of knowledge in turn makes it difficult to collect and integrate knowledge that is the main process of synthesis. We model synthesis process as integration of knowledge units called design experiences that is described on different ontologies. We show a formalization for synthesis theory based on our design process theory in which a design process is an iterative logical process of abduction and deduction on design solution, its properties and behaviors, and knowledge on objects. In our formalization, a unit of knowledge that we call design experience is a piece of information with objects, knowledge on the objects, properties on the objects, and ontology to describe these types of information. Synthesis process is to integrate a set of knowledge units as follows; (1) collecting design experiences; (2) building a model that can includes the collected design experiences by integrating ontologies of the design experiences, and (3) minimizing an element that designers want to find newness. The copyright of this paper belongs to the papers authors. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial