Structural Constraint-Based Modeling and Reasoning with Basic Configuration Cells

Abstract

Configuration tasks are an important application area in engineering design. The proposed solving techniques use either a constraint-based framework or a logic-based approach. We propose a methodology to obtains desired configuration using basic configuration cells(BCC). They are built by means of the predefined components and connections of the given configuration problem. In practical applications of configuration tasks the BCCs and configuration goals are represented according to object-oriented programming paradigm. They are mapped into a numeric constraint satisfaction problem. The transformation of a basic configuration cell into a new one generates a sequence of numeric constraint satisfaction problems. We propose an algorithm that solves this sequence of problems in order to obtain a configuration solution according to the desired requirements or that detects inconsistencies in the requirements. The integration of object- oriented and constraint programming paradigms allows us to achieve a synergy that produces results that could not be obtained if each one were working individually.