A formal basis for design process planning and management

Abstract

In this paper we present a formalism that allows for a complete and general characterization of design disciplines and for a unified representation of arbitrarily complex design processes taking place in the context of these disciplines. This formalism has been used as the basis for the development of several prototype CAD meta-tools that offer effective design process planning and management services.

Requirements-based design evaluation

“…Recently, a more formal model of the electronic design process has been proposed in [8] which provides an excellent model of sub-problem interaction for the solution of particular design problems. This model parallels the DAE work in that it views the design process as having two fundamental information components: knowledge and data, and provides for the separation and linking of design object desired behavior (RD data) and realization (AD data).…”

Planning and Managing Multi-disciplinary and Concurrent Design Processes

“…We will however introduce the principal concepts. Readers interested in a more detailed description should consult references [4] and [1]. Figure 1 illustrates the basic elements of Minerva's design process representation: design objects, design objectives, operators and consistency constraints.…”

Improved tool and data selection in task management

“…Hercules also provides task management to the Minerva design process management layer currently under development [4]. The designer gives problem specifications and goals to Minerva, and Minerva helps the designer break the problem into sub-problems and map them onto tasks.…”