A Design Activity Modeling Methodology For Distributed Resources Integration

Nowadays, design activities are increasingly dependent on distributed design resources to work together. This paper presents an essential factors oriented design activity modeling methodology which is able to improve the systematization and informationization ability of engineering design. The study focuses on methods and techniques of the modeling theory applied on distributed design resources integration.First of all, by analyzing the connotation of design activities, the concept of essential design factors is introduced. "5W1H" method is used to extract 4 basic essential design factors: design objective, design method, design object, and design process. Essential design factors coordinate system is presented as modeling tool of design activity. The formal definition of essential design factors coordinate system is given and a design activity modeling language DAML is implemented. The essential design factors coordinate system can not only support design activity modeling and analysis, but also perform as meta-models to drive design activities execution.At the design activity implementation aspect, this paper presents 3 key technologies to match essential design factors coordinate system: domain design interface, design context and design process graph. Formal definitions of these 3 technologies are given and each technology has its own description language: domain interface description languages DIDL, design context description language DCDL and design process graph definition language DPDL. Focusing on the need of design process graph execution, basic design process modes are studied and the infrastructures technologies of design process graph are discussed.Due to design activities need to invoke heterogeneous distributed design resources when they are running, design service is introduced to perform as basic design resources wrapping unit. Based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Integrated Intelligent Unit (IIU) theory, the formal definition of design service is given and the properties, structure, classification, quality, infrastructures technologies of design service are studied. In order to describe the relationship between essential design factors and design services in design activities, Basic Essential Design Factors Interaction Model and Design Services Organization Model are presented in this paper.After that, based on essential factors oriented design activity modeling theory, this paper developed essential factors oriented design environment EFORDER, designed its Subsystems, introduced its infrastructures technologies, and described its running process.Finally, the design activity modeling theory and EFORDER are demonstrated on two real engineering applications: the mechanics projects analysis of National Natural Science Foundation of China and vehicle engine compartment layout design. The demonstrations show that the essential factors oriented design activity modeling theory can do good job on design activities modeling and analysis, and also can integrate and employ the distributed design resources during design process. The implement of EFORDER can improve the design efficiency and quality.