GEOMETRIC CONSTRUCTION BY ASSEMBLING SOLVED SUBFIGURES

Among the expected contributions of Artificial Intelligence to Compute r-Aided Design is the possibility of constructing a geometric object, the description of which is given by a system of topological and dimen sional constraints. This paper presents the theoretical foundations of an original approach to formal geometric construction of rigid bodies in the Euclidian plane, based on invariance under displacements and r elaxation of positional constraints. This general idea allows to expla in in greater detail several methods proposed in the literature. One o f the advantages of this approach is its ability to efficiently genera lize and join together different methods for local solving. The paper also describes the main features of a powerful and extensible operatio nal prototype based on these ideas, which can be viewed as a simple mu lti-agent system with a blackboard. Finally, some significant examples solved by this prototype are presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V .