Representing strategic design knowledge

This paper proposes a logic-based computational model to support design. The model incorporates a meta-level architecture to explicitly represent the declarative design knowledge and strategic knowledge used by the designer It consists of an object layer; a design requirements layer and strategies for exploring the design space. Particular attention is paid to the representation of strategic knowledge and how to reason with it. An extended first-order logic is also described, which has been used to represent some vehicle packaging knowledge. This computational model is being implemented in KAUS (Knowledge Acquisition and Utilization System)-a general-purpose knowledge-based system, founded on multi-layered logic. The domain of car design is being used to evaluate the proposed meta-level architecture as a means of providing logic based support for design. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.