Guiding component form design using decision consequence knowledge support

摘要

This paper describes a generic approach to guiding designers when making decisions during the early stages of design. The objective of the research is to enable designers to foresee unintended life-cycle consequences during mechanical component design. Engineering design is a process of evolving solutions to a design problem through the commitment of decisions. As a designer commits a new design decision, a more concrete design solution is generated. Decisions made can have intended and unintended consequences on the performance of the life phase activities that follow, such as manufacturing, assembly, and disposal. Many existing tools only consider the impact of the design solution on later life-cycle phases when the solution is almost complete. This makes changes expensive and difficult.