An `AI in Design' View of Design
System Knowledge

Hierarchies

Are there any hierarchies provided?

e.g., hierarchies of components, functions, plans, tasks, etc.

Discussion. As design is often approached as a decomposition problem, hierarchies are often used for guiding the decomposition process. Some hierarchies encode abstraction levels, while others represent part-of relationships. Various degrees of abstractness in a hierarchy of functions can be helpful in function instantiation, while a hierarchy of components can be used for structural decomposition tasks [Lee et al. 1992] [Umeda & Tomiyama 1997].

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