DesignAdvisor

The conceptual phase of engineering design as a problem-solving process is one of the most ill structured intellectual activities in terms of its vague goals as well as the complexity, indeterminacy and inconsistency of the methods involved. Revealing the design goals within both economical and technical multi-criteria context and then transforming the abstract specification of required functions into their eventual working principle embodiment, this phase is of a paramount importance with respect to the ultimate quality of the technical solution sought.

The volume and diversity of the information received, processed and transmitted during the fuzzy phase of conceptual engineering design are huge. This project aims at providing for expert design assistance under conditions of incomplete, inconsistent and uncertain information by means of our DesignAdvisor - an application software tool under development that is to guide designers in a purposeful manner towards applying appropriate iterative procedures and methods of systematic design problem analysis as well as generation, testing and modification of corresponding potential principle solutions. Thus, by progressive building and refinement, the embodied function structure of the system is gradually developed according to the explicit requirements elicited. This involves a comprehensive exploration, evaluation and comparison of multiple selected alternative conceptual schemes by function decomposition and means allocation.

Based entirely on the iConceptStore^™ flexible infrastructure, functionality and tools, the conceptual DesignAdvisor should serve as an excellent information and code base for further customer-specific application extensions, encompassing any of the next remaining (physical embodiment and detail) phases of engineering design.