Integrating intelligent methodological and tutoring assistance in a CASE platform: The PANDORA experience

Database Design discipline involves so different aspects as conceptual and logical modelling knowledge or domain understanding. That implies a great effort to carry out the real world abstraction task and represent it through a data model. CASE tools emerge in order to automating the database development process. These platforms try to help to the database designer in different database design phases. Nevertheless, this tools are frequently mere diagrammers and do not carry completely out the design methodology that they are supposed to support; furthermore, they do not offer intelligent methodological advice to novice designers. This paper introduces the PANDORA tool (acronym of Platform for Database Development and Learning via Internet) that is being developed in a research project which tries to mitigate some of the deficiencies observed in several CASE tools, defining methods and techniques for database development which are useful for students and practitioners. Specifically, this work is focused on two PANDORA components: Conceptual Modelling and Learning Support subsystems

A FRAMEWORK FOR FUNCTION SPECIFICATIONS-TO-CONCEPTUAL FORM TRANSLATION TOOL IN FUNCTION-ORIENTED MECHANICAL DESIGN SYSTEMS

Design is functionality driven. All products and parts have some intended reason behind their existence. Although computer aided systems have made considerable advances in capturing and representing geometrical shape, not much progress has been made in capturing and modeling product functionality and its physical realization. This research proposes a methodology to assist designers during the first stages of design. This methodology provides a framework to help the designer translate functional specifications into conceptual forms. This research develops a translation tool to model functionality and to carry out conceptual design with the aid of the computer. This tool serves as a bridge between the conceptual design phase and the detailed design phase of a product. The translation tool developed in this research supports the conceptual design phase by providing a functional data model, a function server model, and a conceptual product model. The functional model includes the use of operands and relations to define and capture product functionality. The function server model represents the physical realization of the specified functions. The conceptual product model organizes and documents the product information in both the functional and the physical domains. The knowledge base for the function servers is stored in a function driven database. This database allows the designer to view design possibilities that may never have occurred to them.Models provided in this work have been implemented as a relational database system by using MySQL. A web-based graphic user interface is developed with PHP to provide an interactive environment for modeling and for searching the function driven database. Propagation of functional and physical information to downstream design activities has been enabled by the use of the XML data format. The models and concepts developed in this research are validated through a case study of a realistic mechanical device

Development of a conceptual design tool for mechanism design

Engineering design can be seen as a problem solving process in which engineers and designers convert their thoughts and ideas into real-life designs satisfying market and customer needs. The conceptual design process is crucial in engineering product design since it determines fundamental design features with respect to design requirements. Any decisions made at this stage have a significant impact on later stages of design. However, connection between system functional requirements and selection of actual mechanical components in mechanism designs is severely lacking. With the purpose filling this gap and assisting engineers and designers to obtain in-depth understanding on commonly seen mechanisms and machine elements a database (MMET) was established and programmed containing detail information of these components including technical functional attributes, movement attributes, pictures/drawings and merit analysis. A conceptual design tool built on MMET was then developed aiming to help the user to explore a broad range of mechanical components regarding system requirements. The database and conceptual design tool were validated and improved through industrial case studies which suggest the addition of Function Means tree and Functional Analysis Diagram. The value of MMET and the new conceptual design tool are indicated via positive outcomes of case studies, asserting their capability of offering assistance in understanding engineering product functions and how these functions are achieved, enabling comparisons regarding same functional requirements and finally providing opportunities for conceptual design improvements based on a cyclic process containing detail functional analysis, function-means tree construction and design optimisation.Open Acces

Function-Based Computer Aided Conceptual Design Support Tool

Conceptual design is considered as the most critical and important phase of design process. It is the stage where product’s fundamental features are determined, large proportion of the lifecycle cost of the product is committed, and other major decisions are made, which have significant impact on the downstream design and related manufacturing processes. It is a knowledge intensive process where diverse knowledge and several years of experience are put together to design quality and cost effective products. Unfortunately, computer support systems for this phase are lagging behind compared to the currently available commercial computer aided design (CAD) tools for the later stage of design to reduce the designers workload and product development time. The overall goal of this research is to provide designers with computational tool that support conceptual design process. To achieve this goal a methodology that integrates systematic design approach with knowledge-based system is proposed in this thesis. Accordingly, a framework of computer based computational tool known as conceptual design support tool (CDST) is developed using the proposed methodology. The tool assists designers in performing functional modeling by providing standard vocabularies of functions in the form of function library, generate concepts stored in the database from previous designs, display the generated concepts on the morphology chart, combine the concepts and evaluate the concepts variants. Concepts from subsea processing equipment design have been collected and saved in the database. The tool also accepts new concepts from the designer through its knowledge acquisition system to be saved in the database for future use. In doing so, it is possible to integrate human creativity with data handling capabilities of computers to perform conceptual design more efficiently than solely manual design. The tool can also be used as a knowledge management system to preserve expert’s knowledge and train novice designers. The applicability of the proposed methodology and developed tool is illustrated and validated by using a case study and validation test conducted by independent evaluators

Data integration for quantitative analysis of sustainability

The development of an integrated data repository for urban sustainability analysis is presented; it aims to enhance quantitative analysis of urban sustainability on real statistical data with relevant geographic references. The method is complementary to qualitative and quantitative analyses of sample data, which are the main approaches adopted in conventional urban sustainability analysis. The paper highlights the background and importance of using statistical data for urban planning and analysis. Selected statistics sources and various geospatial objects relevant to the geo-references of the statistical data are reviewed. The conceptual model of the integrated data repository is described and the logical integration of statistics from different sources is illustrated. The detailed geospatial conceptual model shows the geospatial classes, main attributes and relationships between these geospatial classes. The paper details the procedure of setting up a server-based database to host both geospatial and non-geospatial data, and uses PostGIS query to interrogate geospatial information in the database, including how to convert the database tables from other formats. A geographic information system (GIS) is introduced as a user-side tool to reveal geospatial and non-geospatial data. Case studies of application of the database for urban sustainability analysis are described. Data maps generated for these case studies can assist planning and design professionals in analysing some urban sustainability issues. Potential applications in various sustainability analyses, barriers and future improvements are also discussed

Function-Based Computer Aided Conceptual Design Support Tool

Conceptual design is considered as the most critical and important phase of design process. It is the stage where product’s fundamental features are determined, large proportion of the lifecycle cost of the product is committed, and other major decisions are made, which have significant impact on the downstream design and related manufacturing processes. It is a knowledge intensive process where diverse knowledge and several years of experience are put together to design quality and cost effective products. Unfortunately, computer support systems for this phase are lagging behind compared to the currently available commercial computer aided design (CAD) tools for the later stage of design to reduce the designers workload and product development time. The overall goal of this research is to provide designers with computational tool that support conceptual design process. To achieve this goal a methodology that integrates systematic design approach with knowledge-based system is proposed in this thesis. Accordingly, a framework of computer based computational tool known as conceptual design support tool (CDST) is developed using the proposed methodology. The tool assists designers in performing functional modeling by providing standard vocabularies of functions in the form of function library, generate concepts stored in the database from previous designs, display the generated concepts on the morphology chart, combine the concepts and evaluate the concepts variants. Concepts from subsea processing equipment design have been collected and saved in the database. The tool also accepts new concepts from the designer through its knowledge acquisition system to be saved in the database for future use. In doing so, it is possible to integrate human creativity with data handling capabilities of computers to perform conceptual design more efficiently than solely manual design. The tool can also be used as a knowledge management system to preserve expert’s knowledge and train novice designers. The applicability of the proposed methodology and developed tool is illustrated and validated by using a case study and validation test conducted by independent evaluators

Design and construction of maintainable knowledge bases through effective use of entity-relationship modeling techniques

The use of an accepted logical database design tool, Entity-Relationship Diagrams (E-RD), is explored as a method by which conceptual and pseudo-conceptual knowledge bases may be designed. Extensions to Peter Chen\u27s classic E-RD method which can model knowledge structure used by knowledge-based applications are explored. The use of E-RDs to design knowledge bases is proposed as a two-stage process. In the first stage, and E-RD, termed the Essential E-RD, is developed of the realm of the problem or enterprise being modeled. The Essential E-RD is completely independent of any knowledge representation model (KRM) and is intended for the understanding of the underlying conceptual entities and relationships in the domain of interest. The second stage of the proposed design process consists of expanding the Essential E-RD. The resulting E-RD, termed the Implementation E-RD, is a network of E-RD-modeled KRM constructs and will provide a method by which the proper KRM may be chosen and the knowledge base may be maintained. In some cases, the constructs of the Implementation E-RD may be mapped directly to a physical knowledge base. Using the proposed design tool will aid in both the development of the knowledge base and its maintenance. The need for building maintainable knowledge bases and problems often encountered during knowledge base construction will be explored. A case study is presented in which this tool is used to design a knowledge base. Problems avoided by the use of this method are highlighted, as are advantages the method presents to the maintenance of the knowledge base. Finally, a critique of the ramifications of this research is presented, as well as needs for future research

STR-996: OPTIMIZATION FOR BRIDGE TYPE SELECTION USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

Many Researchers have attempted to establish a methodology for the selection of bridge type in a systematic manner. Knowledge based systems (KBS) and other Expert Systems (ES) have been used for this purpose but they have some limitations and restrictions. This paper proposes a methodology to implement a Decision Support System (DSS) in an artificial intelligent environment that aims to suggest a bridge type with its main components at the conceptual design phase, based on the characteristics and performance of existing and similar bridges in order to predict the performance of proposed ones that have been analyzed by decision makers with limited subjectivity. The proposed methodology is divided into three main divisions: 1) this division includes a database that will be structured to store appropriated information besides including models like Point Scale and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) systems that will serve for linguistic conversion to numbers needed for the DSS engine. This division contains as well all the mandatory criteria that have influence on the performance of proposed bridges. 2) this division is the core of the “DSS Engine” where it receives the information from the database that will be implemented in an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) module for training, testing and then predicting the performance of a new case bridge. Afterwards a decision will be made to implement the ANN’s results into a Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM) environment to visualize the suggested design and to predict the potential problems. 3) In this division, a final decision will be made based on the results of the second division. In the proposed DSS, most of the factors are considered as criteria in the database; criteria that have influence on the decision are automatically considered during the analysis process and are introduced in the DSS Engine. The flexibility of the proposed methodology and particularly the database and the method of analysis will make the DSS very helpful in the area of bridge design and management. This will provide bridge engineers with an efficient tool that will minimize the subjectivity in their decisions. A case project will be considered to test the workability and capability of the proposed methodology

Space-centred information management approach to improve CAD-based healthcare building design

This study focuses on developing a space-centred CAD tool to enable designers to effectively manage and implement the information of design guidance information and user requirements during design processes, especially for the stages of design briefing and conceptual design. It aims to structure and store design guidance and user requirements for healthcare building design into a relational database, and link them to relevant space entities in design plans. The tool is developed on the platform of Autodesk Architecture Desktop (ADT). It also enables users to store and retrieve pictures associated with textual information, because pictures have been always used by designers as an effective medium to represent and deliver design information and knowledge. This can give users directly visual and more understandable perceptions of the design guidance. The tool is fully embedded with Autodesk AutoCAD systems to ensure the application of this tool being fully merged with CAD-based design process. A set of design guidance about Alzheimer clinic built environments are adopted as a sample to demonstrate and validate the tool. Moreover, the scenario of expanding this application to more broad areas has also been foreseen

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.