Case-Based Design Facilitated by the Design Exemplar

Case Base Design (CBD) systems aid designers in addressing their new design problems by allowing them to search intelligently previously stored valid designs, retrieve the ones that satisfy or nearly satisfy their problem specifications, and adapt them to their new requirements. Many existing systems use ad-hoc functions and algorithms to perform these tasks. The design exemplar is introduced as a tool to index, query, and transform design cases in CBD. Unlike other approaches, design exemplars rely on a generic domain independent representation of entities and their relationships and are evaluated by a general algorithm based upon constraint validation and satisfaction. A retrieval mechanism for retrieval of archived 3D knowledge is facilitated by the design exemplar. Sample sessions for the retrieval tool are provided.