Qualitative representation of machine behaviors for intelligent CAD systems

Abstract We propose a qualitative representation method which would be a foundation of object representation for intelligent CAD systems. Behaviors of mechanical devices can be described as sequential collections of physical phenomena, and can be reasoned in a symbolic way. The first step of reasoning about a mechanical device is to find all physical phenomena corresponding to one state of the device. The second step is to reason about the following states and determine qualitative geometric transitions. The reasoning system is applied to the design of a conveyer in automatic vending machines.