Similarity-based knowledge agents for cooperative design

Stands have an important role in an event. They present the image of a company, project its presence and emphasize the corporate identity to all guests. Architecture companies, which design stands, involve several individuals. From conceptual design to the construction of a final product, a stand project passes through many hands, each one adding bits and pieces until it is completed. The physical distance, difficulties in communication and cultural aspects make workers interact less than necessary, generating problems in all phases of the design activities. Reuse of materials and ideas is less feasible as design complexity increases. The processes and problems in stand projects are quite common and can be easily found in other design situations. We present an agent framework to improve process awareness in an architecture company. Based on users activities and previous designs, agents identify possibilities for reuse and provide information to the conceptual designer so that their designs take construction difficulties and possibilities for reuse into account. The agents instrument the process to produce global awareness, to facilitate later steps and optimize the process as a whole. In this paper we present the agent architecture, as well as each agent´s general functioning and reasoning rules.