A process for consolidating and reusing design knowledge

Significant improvements in design quality and productivity are possible when designers operate in a domain-specific information workspace with low-cost access to relevant application, design, and technology information. The authors present a validated process for constructing such workspaces to support product family design and evolution. The process involves three related efforts: techniques to consolidate critical analysis and design information from different projects and different engineering sites called domain analysis; online representation of the information in structured form called technology books; and methods and tools to reuse information. Each area is described, with the focus being on technology books. Technology books are object-oriented databases whose objects capture typed information about analyses, designs, and code in a variety of notations. Relations with well-defined semantics link objects; these can be used to navigate through the technology book, and to reason about the information it contains