A flexible distributed design assistance tool in early design phases

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The globalisation is increasing the complexity of product development in terms of productvariants and the range of technologies implemented. It emphasises the requirement fordeveloping various design information support systems for the world market. However,small and medium enterprises that employ a wide range of design procedures may not beable to afford customised information support systems, with the result that there is a needfor flexible, i.e. easily adaptable, design support tools.Four case studies were carried out to investigate the requirements for an informationsupport system aimed at the design process and design documents. They indicated that adesign information support system aimed at supporting design teams in the pre-detailmechanical design phases should be able to adapt various design methods and handledesign information in a flexible way. Flexible here means being applicable over a widerange of contexts and extendable without affecting data already captured.Ontology based approaches are widely applied where diverse information has to behandled. The development of the Internet today also makes a distributed design approachmore and more popular for mechanical design. An internet-based design support systemcalled DiDeas II (Distributed Design assistant) was developed here with an ontologybasedapproach implemented to provide distributed and flexible assistance during conceptgeneration in small companies. The DiDeas II has separate server side and client sideprograms, which communicate through a TCP/IP connection.DiDeas II allows design teams to manage their design information according to variousdesign methods, to decrease time-delays and to improve communication between teammembers. These benefits were confirmed in two case studies carried out to evaluateDiDeas II.Keywords:Distributed design; ontology; concept design, web-based system.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University