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Currently available computer-aided design tools provide strong support for the later stages of product development processes where the structure and shape of the design have been fixed. Support for earlier stages of product development, when both the structure and shape of the design are still fluid, demands conceptual design tools that support designers' ways of thinking and working, and enhance creativity, for example, by offering design alternatives, difficult or not, possible without the use of such tools. The potential of spatial grammars as a technology to support such design tools has been demonstrated through experimental research prototypes since the 1970s. In this paper, we provide a review of recent spatial grammar implementations, which were presented in the Design Computing and Cognition 2010 workshop on which this paper is based, in the light of requirements for conceptual design tools and identify future research directions in both research and design education.

This paper presents a general graph grammar methodology for structure synthesis of mechanisms. Much of current mechanism design is based on a systematic method popularized by Freudenstein, Mruthyunjaya, and Tsai (among others). A graph grammar is a more natural expression for a method that relies on algebraic abstractions of graph theoretic principles. Our proposed grammar rules add vertices and loops to a start graph to obtain desired structural requirements. A grammar adaptation of an existing linear time algorithm for the detection of isomorphism is presented. Also presented is a specialized grammar for the structure synthesis of Epicyclic Gear Trains. A valid graph grammar for structure synthesis of mechanisms enables both the eventual automation of general atlas construction and atlas construction for customized mechanism classes. [S1050-0472(00)01904-8]

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