Concept design visualization-a component-based approach

The paper presents a new framework and design methodology for concept-level systems design. The central part of the framework is an introduction of the components to represent the systems concept. The framework utilizes these components to navigate the designer's exploration to obtain subsystems and semiautomatically integrates subsystems into one whole system. The design exploration (DE) components are a set of abstractions of the design exploration activities. A design history is recorded as a dependency graph of the DE components. The systems integration (SI) components are a set of relationships between subsystems from the systems integration perspective. Using SI components, the designer can design the system's hierarchical structure as a graph, the systems integration graph. By introducing a common semantic ground for these components, a design navigation algorithm and a conversion algorithm from the design history to the systems integration graph are introduced.