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From: keith@uiucme.uiucme
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: knowledge and design
Message-ID: <11800001@uiucme>
Date: Sun, 24-Nov-85 11:29:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucme.11800001
Posted: Sun Nov 24 11:29:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Nov-85 20:26:20 EST
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Nf-ID: #N:uiucme:11800001:000:2801
Nf-From: uiucme.uiucme!keith    Nov 24 10:29:00 1985





KNOWLEDGE AND DESIGN.  First of a series.


How do we design?  Can a computer design for us?

To take CAD past the stage of increasingly pretty pictures to the
point that the computer can actually generate portions of the
design, we can take two avenues:

     - Establish a rigid, algorithmic approach that will allow us
       to code design procedures in conventional programs.

     - Reach an understanding of the human process of design that
       will allow us to apply artificial intelligence programming
       methods to solve the problem.

In fact, like most engineering solutions to problems, the solution
that will be proposed is a compromise.  Both of the methods offer
some advantages, both have major disadvantages as well.

While my own application of design knowledge is to machines and
structures, I have learned a great deal about the approach to design
from the computer science community.  Structured analysis is the
only method that I know of that deals with the early, abstract
problems in design (the really interesting problems) in a systematic
manner.  I have learned that developing a quick diagram of
the functions and interactions present in the basic problem helps
to pinpoint problem areas requiring concentration, and illuminates
areas that might have been overlooked.

Computer Science has learned what the rest of us are only just
catching on to - complex systems require a disciplined, structured
design approach unless you want to spend your life debugging.
And in fact there are power plants and factories and ships and
airplanes out there - all of them incredibly complex systems -
that are still being debugged after ten, twenty, even thirty years
of service.

My basic premise has usually prompted immediate agreement or
immediate disagreement.  It is simply that design is a way of
reasoning about abstract problems, and design methods are essentially
the same regardless of what you are designing.  We apply different
domain knowledge, to be sure.  In the sense of the engineering
involved a diesel engine has little to do with a Sony Walkman.
But both were created by combining functional units with defined
interactions into a system.

Instalments to come:
     Topology and Physics
     Loads, Energy, and Information
     The Nature of Domain Limits in Knowledge-Based Programs

These posting are based on research on design methods I'm presently
mired in.  Your comments and especially your pointers to the literature
will be greatly appreciated and may enable me to finish my dissertation
in less than twenty years.


Keith
U of Ill Mech Eng
{stuff I don't know} uiucdcs!uiucme!keith

p.s.:  Of course, if the consensus is that I shouldn't be posting
this boring crap on the net, I'll go back to Murphy's - the metallurgists
don't like me either.