1,721,024 research outputs found

    Constraint capture and maintenance in engineering design

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    The Designers' Workbench is a system, developed by the Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) consortium to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, to ensure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company's design rule book(s). In the principal application discussed here, the evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Design rules are expressed as constraints over the domain ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench's knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a system, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. Further we hypothesize that in order to appropriately apply, maintain and reuse constraints, it is necessary to understand the underlying assumptions and context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to them as “application conditions” and these form a part of the rationale associated with the constraint. We propose a methodology to capture the application conditions associated with a constraint and demonstrate that an explicit representation (machine interpretable format) of application conditions (rationales) together with the corresponding constraints and the domain ontology can be used by a machine to support maintenance of constraints. Support for the maintenance of constraints includes detecting inconsistencies, subsumption, redundancy, fusion between constraints and suggesting appropriate refinements. The proposed methodology provides immediate benefits to the designers and hence should encourage them to input the application conditions (rationales)

    The role of ontologies in creating and maintaining corporate knowledge: a case study from the aero industry

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    The Designers’ Workbench is a system, developed to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, by making sure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company’s design rule book(s). The evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench’s knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a tool, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. The tool allows the user to combine selected entities from the domain ontology with keywords and operators of a constraint language to form a constraint expression. Further, we hypothesize that to apply constraints appropriately, it is necessary to understand the context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to this as “application conditions”. We show that an explicit representation of application conditions, in a machine interpretable format, along with the constraints and the domain ontology can be used to support the verification and maintenance of constraints

    The Designers' Workbench: Using Ontologies and Constraints for Configuration.

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    Typically, complex engineering artifacts are designed by teams who may not all be located in the same building or even city. Additionally, besides having to design a part of an artifact to be consistent with the specification, it must also be consistent with the company's design standards. The Designers' Workbench supports designers by checking that their configurations satisfy both physical and organisational constraints. The system uses an ontology to describe the available elements in a configuration task. Configurations are composed of features, which can be geometric or nongeometric, physical or abstract. Designers can select a class of feature (e.g. Bolt) from the ontology, and add an instance of that class (e.g. a particular bolt) to their configuration. Properties of the instance can express the parameters of the feature (e.g. the size of the bolt), and also describe connections to other features (e.g. what parts the bolt is used to hold together)

    ConEditor: Tool to Input and Maintain Constraints

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    We present a tool which helps domain experts capture and maintain constraints. The tool displays parts of an ontology (as classes, sub-classes and properties) in the form of a tree. A number of keywords and operators from a constraint language are also listed. The tool helps a user to create a constraint expression. Additionally, the tool has a facility which allows the user to input tabular data. The expressed constraints can be converted into a standard format, making them portable. It is planned to integrate this tool, ConEditor, with Designers’ Workbench, a system that supports human designers

    ConEditor+: Capture and Maintenance of Constraints in Engineering Design

    No full text
    The Designers' Workbench is a system, developed to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, by making sure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company’s design rule book(s). Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench's knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a tool, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. The tool allows the user to combine selected entities from the domain ontology with keywords and operators of a constraint language to form a constraint expression. Further, we hypothesize that to apply constraints appropriately, it is necessary to understand the context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to this as "application conditions". We show that an explicit representation of application conditions, in a machine interpretable format, along with the constraints and the domain ontology can be used to support the verification and maintenance of constraints

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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