ABSTRACT
Before discussing how knowledge-based systems can be applied to design, it is important to understand what we mean by the word design. Traditionally, a distinction is drawn between engineering design and industrial design:
We will take a more catholic view of design, in which no distinction is drawn between the technical needs of engineering design and the aesthetic approach of industrial design. Our working de¡nition of design will be as follows (Sriram et al. 1989):
Some of the constraints must be predetermined, and these constitute the product design specication (PDS). Other constraints may evolve as a result of decisions made during the design process (Pons and Raine 2005). The PDS is an expression of the requirements of a product, rather than a speci¡cation of the product itself. The latter, which emerges during the design process, is the design. The design can be interpreted for manufacture or construction, and it allows predictions about the performance of the product to be drawn.
