A Structured Design Methodology and Metadesigner: A System Shell Concept for Computer Aided Creative Design

This paper discusses the concept of managing the design process using Objected Oriented Programming Paradigm. A software system shell, called MetaDesigner is being developed for aiding the human designer to create new designs, based on the hierarchical nature of the design space. This system shell is intended to have the following capabilities: (1) interactive and system-guided design process to analyze design structure and to characterize design options, (2) to provide interactive and system-guided knowledge acquisition, classification, and retrieval to achieve machine learning, and (3) to build a flexible and forever expandable structure for knowledge-based system implementation.