A Study on an Engineering History Base

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to build a database, named an engineering history base, which stores histories of engineering cases. Attentions are paid to a distinction between two types of knowledge used during engineering processes ; product knowledge and process knowledge. The product knowledge represents products, e.g. drawings, while the process knowledge represents information how to make and how to use the product knowledge including design intent. One of the most important requirements for the engineering history base is to access the data conveniently, taking account into the nature of the histories. For this, a methodology which uses constraints to describe process is proposed. To use constraints facilitates connections among process data and explanations. A prototype system has been developed to show the validity of the proposed methodology.