Development of an Intelligent Design Information Management System

Commercially available software systems for mechanical design only store the final design, and all intermediate information generated during the design process is lost. This intermediate information, however, is quite valuable in understanding the thought process through which the initial requirements are transformed into the final design. The loss of information prevents efficient utilization of previous design information in subsequent design projects. Even if some design information is archived, existing software systems do not provide an efficient content-based search tools to search through the archived information. We propose to develop a methodology and a system that will allow designers to effectively archive and retrieve design history, specifications, requirements, function, geometry, test results, and rationale information during the design process. The proposed work consists of the following tasks: (1) development of a comprehensive design information model, (2) assessment of Feasibility of Using Standards in Information Representations, (3) development of a framework to support customizable search criteria, and (4) development of a new framework to support multi-modal search.