Abstract
During the design and development of new products, design engineers use many techniques to generate and define new and "good" concepts. Inherent in this search for solutions is the conscious and unconscious reliance on prior experience and knowledge, or design-by-analogy. In this paper, a quantitative metric for design-by-analogy is developed. This metric is based on the functional similarity of products. By using this product-similarity metric, designers are able to formalize and quantify design-by-analogy techniques during concept and layout design. The methods, as developed in this paper, allow a designer with limited experience to develop sophisticated solutions that enhance the overall design of a new product. Also, a designer's current design-by-analogy vocabulary can be extended beyond his or her immediate experience, providing access and contributions to new domains by discovering different products with common functions. The similarity metric and its application are clarified and validated through a case study. The case study is the original design of a pickup winder.
Recommended Citation
D. A. McAdams and K. L. Wood, "A Quantitative Similarity Metric for Design-by-analogy," Journal of Mechanical Design, vol. 124, no. 2, pp. 173 - 182, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Jan 2002.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1115/1.1475317
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Publication Status
Available Access
Keywords and Phrases
Customer Needs; Design-by-Analogy; Functional Analysis; Novel Product Design; Product Similarity
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1050-0472
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2002
