Product Design Ontology System Based on FBS-API

Design ontology plays an important role in modern multi-party collaborations and knowledge-intensive designs. In this paper, a product design ontology system is proposed by analyzing and deconstructing the design function–behavior–structure (FBS) model and geometry application programming interfaces (APIs). Geometry APIs and surface behavior are considered minimum structure units and concrete function realization, respectively. APIs and their surface behavior are defined to build the semantic connection among functions, behavior, and structures and refine further the ontology of FBS design. According to some inference rules, design ontology can be used to obtain automatically or semi-automatically the preliminary product function and structure. The studied cases prove that the representation of the design knowledge based on the FBS-API ontology overcomes the limit of mere word conventions and is more conducive to the quantization and derivation of product design.