Functional Modeling: Toward a Common Language for Design and Reverse Engineering

Computer support for future product development must focus on the conceptual design stage where informed decisions make the most impact on design. Working within a systematic, function-based design methodology, we propose modifications to a formal representation originally applied to reverse engineering. In recasting this representation for design capture and reuse, significant barriers have been identified: the language appears to lack expressiveness in key areas, and the representations generated from reverse engineering differ significantly from those used for design. Toward addressing these issues, we augment the language to improve its description of key aspects of design function. In addition, we propose several means of reorganizing reverse engineering information to enhance its reuse in design. Both of these efforts are evaluated in a framework of case-based design, showing significant improvement over the original design representation and pointing toward future improvements.© 2003 ASME