Integrating Knowledge Objects and Design Descriptions to Support Maintenance of Design Automation Systems

摘要

Design automation systems are implemented by many manufacturing companies to automate the repetitive and time-consuming design tasks. By automating such tasks, the designers have more time to focus on creativity and offer more customized solutions to the customers. To automate a design task, first, the design knowledge should be captured from designers. This type of knowledge which is usually understandable by humans should be structured and formalized. Next, computer codes and scripts (that are mostly understandable by computers/expert persons) are created to execute the knowledge and provide the desired output. To support maintenance of computer codes and scripts in a design automation system, it is necessary to know what, how and why about that piece of code/script. In order to support maintenance of the systems, we represent the system's knowledge in form of knowledge objects. Knowledge objects are executed in run time and consist of two parts: computer readable and human readable. The focus in this paper is on the human readable which we call it "design description". A MOKA-based framework is provided to create design descriptions for the computer readable parts. The design descriptions help engineers to understand and if needed update the computer readable parts, which in a wider aspect support maintenance of the whole system. E-books were used as a way to represent the design descriptions and a case study is provided to explore the results of the research.