Textual/Graphical Design Capture for Concept-Level Synthesis

Abstract Requirements for new systems and products that are generally expressed in a variety of graphical and textual notations can be translated to conceptual graphs (semantic networks) for integration, consistency checking, and synthesis functions. In this paper, the capture, translation and integration of natural language, block diagrams, timing diagrams and state diagrams as used in specifying digital systems requirements are considered. For each of these source notations a set of basic concepts and their interrelationships are identified, and algorithms for automatically generating conceptual graphs from the notations are given. Mechanisms for integrating the resulting conceptual graphs and consistency are discussed.