连杆机构英文文献和中文翻译(9)

菜单

1.6 OTHER APPROACHES TO DESIGN

In recent years, an increased effort has been directed toward a better understanding of design methodology and the design process. Design methodology is the study of the process of designing. One goal of this research is to define the design process in suffi- cient detail to allow it to be encoded in a form amenable to execution in a computer, us- ing "artificial intelligence" (AI).

Dixon[6] defines a design as a state of information which may be in any of several forms:

... words, graphics, electronic data, and/or others. It may be partial or complete. It ranges from a small amount of highly abstract information early in the design process to a very large amount of detailed information later in the process sufficient to perform manufacturing. It may include, but is not limited to, information about size and shape, function, materials, marketing, simulated performance, manufacturing processes, toler- ances, and more. Indeed, any and all information relevant to the physical or economic life of a designed object is part of its design.

He goes on to describe several generalized states of information such as the requirements state which is analogous to our performance specifications. Information about the physical concept is referred to as the conceptual state of information and is analogous to our ideation phase. His feature configuration and parametric states of information are similar in concept to our detailed design phase. Dixon then defines a design process as:

The series of activities by which the information about the designed object is changed from one information state to another.

Axiomatic Design

N. P. Suh[7] suggests an axiomatic approach to design in which there are four domains: customer domain, functional domain, physical domain, and the process domain. These represent a range from "what" to "how," i.e., from a state of defining what the customer wants through determining the functions required and the needed physical embodiment, to how a process will achieve the desired end. He defines two axioms that need to be satisfied to accomplish this:

I Maintain the independence of the functional requirements.

2 Minimize the information content.

The first of these refers to the need to create a complete and nondependent set of perfor- mance specifications. The second indicates that the best design solution will have the lowest information content (i.e., the least complexity). Others have earlier referred to this second idea as KISS, which stands, somewhat crudely, for "keep it simple, stupid."