Relational data mining applied to virtual engineering of product designs

Abstract

Contemporary product design based on 3D CAD tools aims at improved efficiency using integrated engineering environments with access to databases of existing designs, associated documents and enterprise resource planning. The ultimate goal of this work is to achieve design process improvements by applying state-of-the-art ILP systems for relational data mining of past designs, utilizing commonly agreed design ontologies as background knowledge. This paper demonstrates the utility of relational data mining for virtual engineering of product designs through the detection of frequent design patterns, enabled by the proposed baseline integration of hierarchical background knowledge (a CAD ontology) using sorted refinements. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 200'.