A knowledge-based approach to preliminary design synthesis

Design synthesis involves producing one or more design solutions. During preliminary design, the form of the design solution is identified such that a few key constraints are satisfied. This form is refined during detail design such that all relevant constraints are satisfied. This paper describes a knowledge-based approach to preliminary design synthesis using constraint-directed search through levels of abstraction to construct a design solution. The approach is implemented in a knowledge-based framework, EDESYN.