Interaction elements: utilizing knowledge to provide high quality information in a decision support system

The design activity involves many decisions, which must be made based on a wide range of information and knowledge. The concept of product model has been an approach applied to support co-operation across product development within a CE environment. However, to support design decisions with quality and more consistently, additional types of information and knowledge need to be captured within this approach. This paper discusses the use of an additional information and knowledge model, called a Product Range Model, which captures design constraints supporting the design decision making process with quality information. The concept of Interaction Elements is presented, as well as their relationships with possible design solutions to support product functional design. An object-oriented approach has been applied providing a relatively simple structure to deal with the capture of constraints, as well as allowing the reuse of these elements for different design criteria. The work has used injection mould tool design to explore the ideas developed. These have been evaluated through the design and implementation of a design reuse support system utilizing an object-oriented database.