The current market situation forces companies that deal with small scale, dedicated production to meet the needs and demands of their customers quickly. Usually, the products must be designed to fulfil a certain set of requirements. Additional conditions necessary to meet are also the limitations resulting from law regulations related to environmental, safety, maintenance and recycling matters. The imposed requirements are very often contradictory. In such cases the design process is an attempt to find a rational compromise. Fulfilling all the above-mentioned conditions is very difficult, especially for small companies. As the result, engineers have to take into consideration a much wider scope of tasks and responsibilities which are related to different areas of knowledge. Knowledge of a particular area is not always mastered to the extent that allows them to move freely within it. In such situations engineers are willing to use personal knowledge and experiments as the basic sources of design information. The exchange of opinions, joint evaluation of concepts and detailed solutions, as well as long-term and short-term close teamwork are also often observed. Public tools to support the indicated processes did not fully meet the team's requirements. The authors introduce a proposal for an application that supports the solving of this class problem based on modelled, acquired and stored knowledge. The work presents the characteristics and range of supported engineering processes. Next, the concept and the construction of the software, as well as its functioning using real examples, which derive from industrial practice, are presented. Highlights Manufacturers of industrial equipment must be flexible in relation to customer requirements. Designers need to take into account a much wider range of knowledge than in the past. Engineers are willing to use techniques such as re-use and modification. The aim of work is to create software solutions that will streamline the design phase. The authors create an environment where knowledge and its development is the main aspect.

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These days are characterized by globalization and digitization. The scope of both these phenomena is growing in an evolutionary manner. At the same time, knowledge resources are increasing, and in many cases specific knowledge is becoming globally available, and its representation is to a large extent differentiated, more and more efficient, and more effectively digitized. The techniques resulting from the above-mentioned trends allow wider and simpler knowledge sharing, for more frequent and inspiring compilation and interaction of different sources of knowledge. Classic formal and informal methods and tools based on modelled knowledge must take into account these phenomena and processes. Due to the specific level of development of computer resources and knowledge modelling tools, a defined infrastructure of methods and tools has come into being. We define this stage of knowledge modelling as level I. The processes of creating and generating knowledge is also an interaction between various sources of knowledge: human and computer. We define this stage of knowledge modelling as level II. In addition to the approaches mentioned above, there is a group of tools that were created by artificial intelligence, e.g. case-based reasoning, machine learning, data mining, etc. We define this stage of knowledge modelling as level III. Far-reaching specialization is progressing in many real-world processes. Consequently, the used tools, including computer tools, are subjected to this process. An example of such a solution can be a system which is used to support the design process of certain selected types of manufacturing machines.

The work presents real, industrial examples of generating, developing and applying UML templates in knowledge modelling for the needs of KBE applications. The applied templates are a synthetic reflection of standard programming constructions used by teams of programmers in specific industrial conditions. Templates are created taking into account both the very individualized specifics of software development, as well as the individualized process of evolution of a specific project area. In this case the construction of the KBE application is implemented as modelling based on carefully elaborated and largely individually tuned templates. The final application of this class is integrated with commercial CAD / CAE systems and other software. The use of the templates allows for a relatively effective, specialized creation of KBE applications. In addition to the skills needed to work with templates, people using this tool must possess clearly articulated, competent and complete substantive knowledge. The article consists of three sections: the first introduces themes to the templates and presents the process of initialization of this tool class in industrial conditions; the second section shows the use of modelling in the process with the gradual evolution of the modelled knowledge; the third section concerns the application of a strategy based on the rational development of a representative set of templates. The examples presented are based on real industrial implementations conducted over a period of about 10 years.