Knowledge Representation and Ontology Mapping Methods for Product Data in Engineering Applications

Abstract

This work seeks to create a semantic approach that uses ontologies for sharing knowledge related to product data in CAD/CAE applications and for integrating the design evaluation information that these applications individually provide. Our overall approach is coined OADE, Ontology-based Adaptive Design Evaluation. This paper reports on a piece of our ongoing work in this area. The key contributions of this paper include methods for the design of knowledge representation in product design and analysis, population of product data semantics, creation of ontology mapping methods and mapping representations, and mapping of product data semantics to the target application. The mapping method finds matching concepts between different ontologies based on three basic concept relation types: composition, inheritance, and attribute. A prototype implementation is being created using technologies such as OWL (representation tool), Jena (ontology builder), and Prote´ge´ (ontology editor) to demonstrate the approach for integrating a parametric CAD system, custom virtual assembly application, and an ergonomics engineering application. An example is given in this paper to illustrate how this approach can help integration between a product design application and an assembly simulation analysis application. The significance of this work is that it will provide the capability to create, share, and exchange knowledge for solving design evaluation challenges involving multiple applications and multiple viewpoints. A design decision can thus be described using the common concepts across the diverse entities.

Requirements and languages for the semantic representation of manufacturing systems

“…Ontologies support class-based, or object-oriented, description of a knowledge domain, expressing taxonomies and semantically rich relationships among concepts, supporting information retrieval through reasoning. Moreover, by their nature, distinct ontologies can be integrated by creating "bridge" relationships among some concepts of the different ontologies [19]. This characteristic is particularly useful in the description of complex manufacturing systems.…”

Extending product lifecycle management for manufacturing knowledge sharing

“…It is to be noted that most current related work in ontology-driven PLM systems [24][25][26] employ OWL as ontology language. This, therefore, raises an important concern from the point of view of semantic knowledge capture and sharing.…”

“…This is possible because most commercial CAD applications provide open API to help communicate information generated in the application [26]. Information dialog box and triggers a number of steps for retrieving manufacturing part family and manufacturing-critical design features and their parameters, as shown in Figure 9(2).…”

“…Zhan et al [26] have investigated ontologies to share knowledge regarding product data in Computer Aided Design (CAD). Ontology mapping mechanisms have also been specified as a means of knowledge verification across systems.…”

Towards Industrial Implementation of Emerging Semantic Technologies

“…The description logic offered by ontologies provides a means to add structure to often unstructured information [2,[7][8][9][10]. This additional structure has been used to improve querying capabilities of stored knowledge, therefore improving knowledge reuse [1,9].…”