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Design information retrieval: a thesauri-based approach for reuse of informal design information

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Abstract

Information is integral to the engineering design process, and gaining access to design knowledge is critical to effective design decision-making. This paper considers the indexing and retrieval of informal, unstructured information captured from electronic design logbooks. One of the key observations of informal design information is its evolutionary nature over time. While this characteristic makes informal information a rich source for reuse, it also makes it difficult to employ traditional information retrieval (IR) approaches. The work described in this paper is based on a framework developed specifically for the information handling requirements of designers. This manual method for indexing information is adapted to meet the evolutionary nature of design through the development of thesauri for design context. Several approaches to building thesauri are examined, including manual and automated methods. It is found that manual methods provide a high level of IR performance, but also have high overhead requirements. Machine methods, however, may provide a viable, low overhead alternative.

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Notes

  1. There was no performance advantage or disadvantage to using WAIS over SMART for indexing modes, except that existing code for the procedure was already set up for use with WAIS.

  2. Although both the corpus matrix and the affinity matrix derived from it have only positive entries, matrix modes contain both positive and negative terms. For this reason, modes contain information both about which terms should appear together but also that they should not appear along with terms of opposite sign.

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Acknowledgements

Portions of this work were performed under a DARPA DSO-sponsored project, administered with the assistance of ONR, under the RaDEO program and is partially funded by Navy contract N00014096-1-0679. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Southern California, 3715 McClintock Avenue, GER 201, Los Angeles, CA , 90089, USA

    Maria C. Yang

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, 21250, USA

    William H. Wood III

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Terman 523, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, USA

    Mark R. Cutkosky

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  1. Maria C. Yang
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  2. William H. Wood III
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  3. Mark R. Cutkosky
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Correspondence to Maria C. Yang.

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Yang, M., Wood, W.H. & Cutkosky, M.R. Design information retrieval: a thesauri-based approach for reuse of informal design information. Engineering with Computers 21, 177–192 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-005-0003-9

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