A CASE-BASED DESIGN SUPPORT METHOD INCORPORATING RECOGNITION OF THE DESIGNERS INTENTIONS

Despite the recognized importance of design support methods that recog nize and effectively respond to the designer's intentions, there are n o published descriptions of such methods with a clearly defined range of functionality. This paper describes a design support method founded on case based reasoning (CBR) in which a dialog interaction is used t o infer the designer's intentions and to provide the relevant informat ion. This approach offers a variety of information presentation capabi lities and does not require a rigorous rule-based description of the d esigner's intentions. It is intended chiefly to support human design a ctivity by information look-up and display, not as a means of design a utomation. The Yet Another computer-Aided Design (YAAD) system based o n the new method is described. Tests have demonstrated the advantages and capabilities of the method.