Representation of Structural Design Knowledge in a Symbolic Language

Abstract

A structural design language (SDL) is developed in the INTERLISP environment for development of coupled knowledge-based expert systems for structural design problems. This article presents the representation of the structural design knowledge in SDL. The knowledge necessary for design is classified into three categories: static knowledge, dynamic knowledge, and graphical knowledge. Static knowledge is defined as the knowledge necessary for representing the physical structure, its components, and their topology. Dynamic knowledge includes the knowledge of design constraints that have to be satisfied in a given design problem and the heuristics that are used to solve the problem effectively. Four representation schemes are used for representing the static knowledge; that is, atom, list, array, and object-attribute-value triplet. Dynamic knowledge is represented by production rules and functionals via procedural abstraction. Graphical knowledge is represented by bitmaps, windows, and menus. © ASCE.