An Engineering Knowledge Base Management Tool for Dynamic Representation of Product Data

The identification of effective modeling techniques for engineering processes and data representation is a key aspect in the development of Intelligent CAD systems. As an example, in the recently released standard ISO 10303 (STEP) the formal specification language EXPRESS has been introduced in order to represent all the required information. Nevertheless, data schemes based on EXPRESS or other data and/or process models, as E-R, IDEF or NIAM, are static in nature and cannot cope with the intrinsically dynamic and evolutionary nature of the engineering design process; therefore they can be effectively used only at the end of the design process for documentation purposes or for data exchange. Aim of the present paper is to describe the relevant aspects of a prototypal Engineering Knowledge Base Management Tool for the dynamic generation and modification of process and data models of industrial products, which should be integrated in an Intelligent CAD System. The Engineering Knowledge Base is implemented in LPA-Prolog++, according to the Object-Oriented and Frame paradigms, and should be intended to assure the tasks of: (a) handling (by addition or deletion) the project’s knowledge components, their relations and system rules; (b) re-mapping of rules/relations consequent to possible changes in the model structure. Such features are mainly devoted to: (a) automatic/assisted generation of alternative product re-modeling strategies, according to critical aspects as data availability, required user interaction and computational loads; (b) tracking of the project development history.