ABSTRACT
Adapting design cases involves taking a selected design case, making changes to the case, and labeling the revised case as the new design solution. There are some major concerns in considering adapting design cases to generate new designs. For example, a design is either proprietary or it is customized for a specific context. Proprietary designs such as a Xerox® copier, cannot be used again without violating copyright laws. Customized designs such as buildings, cannot be used again because the exact context will not arise again. Consequently, previous designs cannot simply be re-used. The ideas or the concepts in previous designs can be used again, but their application is necessarily different. This implies that design case adaptation should provide a means of applying a design concept in a new situation or adapting a design description in such a way that the design is not simply “re-used.” Unlike using case-based reasoning for diagnosing faults, where a similar situation can point to the same fault, using case-based reasoning in design requires considering the role the design case plays in generating a new design.
