A computational model of form synthesis based on operation description

Abstract

Design process is an evolving process that begins with design requirements and ends with product description. The complexity of this process is beyond our imagination. The study of design processes attempts to externalize intuitive knowledge held by designers in the process, so we will be able to improve the process and develop the product description in an efficiency way, i.e. computational approach. This study aims to explore what knowledge is involved in design process and how this knowledge is used throughout the process, in which industrial designer translates operation description into synthesizing forms to embody designers' operational intent. From a computational perspective, the knowledge concerned in the process of design, such as the representation of operation, the representation of form elements, the rules of form giving, and the rules controlling the synthesis process, is discussed and formalized in a computational design model. The concept of affordance is adopted to assist the transition from operation description of designers' intent to form description of form elements, which is seen as the embodiments of intended operations. Finally, a computational design model is proposed to simulate the integration of different types of design knowledge. The strength of this computational model lies in its ability to propose multiple synthesized form alternatives to stimulate designers' thinking.