Abstract
Systems that make suggestions to designers are proposed as an aid to preliminary design and as a computational tool for concurrent engineering. By providing suggestions, such systems could help users obtain better design ideas and could bring information normally not considered during preliminary design to the intial design stage.
A suggestion-making CAD system is developed that uses a feature-based representation of the design and a production rule representation of the concurrent engineering knowledge. The encoded knowledge concerns the design of parts for assembly (Boothroyd and Dewhurst, Design for Assembly — A Designer's Handbook, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1983). The system uses no representation of the design specifications. Because of this, the system can not autonomously design something; it can only alter a design in response to a user's design steps. This allows the system to be applicable to many classes of designs that are relevant to some concurrent engineering concern. The user builds a design with a predefined set of geometric features. The system makes suggestions by altering the design with the same set of features.
A system-user test was performed with the system configured in three interactivity modes: a mode that makes no suggestions, a mode that makes suggestions during the preliminary design process, and a mode that makes suggestions immediately after the preliminary design process. Five users were tested with each mode. All users were given the same design assignment, and all were allowed to refer to the standard book-form design for assembly information. The two user groups that received suggestions had a higher fraction of users that created high-quality designs than did the unaided user group. There was little distinction in quality, however, between the suggestions-during and suggestions-after designs. Additionally, users that received suggestions stopped using the book-form information very early in the design process and relied solely on the system's assistance. These results demonstrate that suggestion-making systems can integrate concurrent engineering information into the preliminary design process.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
10. References
Anderson, J. R., Boyle, C. F., Reiser, B. J., “Intelligent Tutoring Systems,” Science, Vol. 228, April 1985, pps. 456–462.
Boothroyd, G., Dewhurst, P., Design for Assembly-A Designer's Handbook, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1983.
Boothroyd, G., Poli, C., Murch, L., Automatic Assembly, Marcel Dekker Inc., New York and Basel, 1982.
Burton, R. R., Brown, J. S., “An Investigation of Computer Coaching for Informal Learning Acitivities,” in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, (eds. D. Sleeman and J. S., Brown), Academic Press, London and New York, 1982, pps. 79–98.
General Electric Calma Co., System Reference Manual for DDM & Dimension III on the VAX and Apollo, 9805 Scranton Rd., San Diego, Calif. 92121-1765, 1983.
Ericsson, K. A., Simon, H. A., Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1984.
Jakiela, M. J., Intelligent Suggestive CAD Systems, PhD Thesis, University of Michigan — Ann Arbor, 1988.
Jakiela, M. J., Papalambros, P. Y., Ulsoy, A. G., “Programming Optimal Suggestions in the Design Concept Phase: Application to the Boothroyd Assembly Charts,” ASME Journal of Mechanisms, Transmissions, and Automation in Design, Vol. 107, No. 2, June 1985, pps. 285–291.
Jakiela, M. J., Papalambros, P. Y., “Design and Implementation of a Prototype ”Intelligent“ CAD System,” American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Paper 87-DAC-51, New York, 1987, also ASME Journal of Mechanisms, Transmissions, and Automation in Design (to appear).
Luby, S. C., Dixon, J. R., Simmons, M. K., “Creating and Using a Features Data Base,” Computers in Mechanical Engineering, November, 1986, pps. 25–33.
Malhotra, A., Thomas, J. C., Carrol, J. M., Miller, L. A., “Cognitive Processes in Design,” International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, pps. 119–140.
Miller, M. L., “A Structured Planning and Debugging Environment for Elementary Programming,” in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, (eds. D. Sleeman and J. S., Brown), Academic Press, London and New York, 1982, pps. 119–135.
Runciman, C., Swift, K., “Expert System Guides CAD for Automatic Assembly,” Assembly Automation, Vol. 5, No. 3, August 1985, pps. 147–150.
Shrager, J., Finin, T., “An Expert System that Volunteers Advice,” Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 18–20, 1982, Pittsburgh, PA, American Association for Artificial Intelligence, pps. 339–340.
Sleeman, D., Brown, J. S., (eds.), Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Academic Press, London and New York, 1982.
Swift, K. G., Firth, P. A., “Knowledge Based Expert Systems in Design for Automatic Handling,” Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Assembly Automation, May 22–24, 1984, Paris, France, IFS (Publications), and North-Holland, Amsterdam, pps. 117–126.
Toriya, H., Satoh, T., Ueda, K., Chiyokura, H., “UNDO and REDO Operations for Solid Modeling,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 6, No. 4, April 1986, pps. 35–42.
Ullman, D. G., Stauffer, L. A., Dietterich, T. G., “Preliminary Results of an Experimental Study of the Mechanical Design Process,” in Results from the NSF Workshop on the Design Process, (ed. M. B. Waldron), Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1987, pps. 145–186.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Jakiela, M.J. (1991). Intelligent suggestive CAD systems research overview. In: Sriram, D., Logcher, R., Fukuda, S. (eds) Computer-Aided Cooperative Product Development. WCACPD 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 492. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014289
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014289
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54008-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47345-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive