An Information Modeling Framework to Support Design Databases and Repositories

This paper introduces an information modeling framework to support representation of design artifacts for design databases and repositories. While most artifact representations consist primarily of geometric information, the object-oriented design modeling language developed through this work enables representation of not only form, but also function and behavior. This research has resulted in the implementation of a design artifact database as well as an information browser that provides the user interface to information contained therein. The implementation is demonstrated using the representation of a power drill as an example.