Abstract
The current trend of CAD system is to make the system intelligent. CAD systems need to be intelligent in the sense that they must be able to use knowledge to achieve the designer’s goal. In the early stages of ship design, more experienced and higher level knowledge is required rather than that of detail design. The existing CAD systems have several limitations in terms of satisfying the requirements of real design. Accordingly, a more powerful and capable CAD system is required to support the activities in the early stage of design. Recently the application of expert systems has been considered as a tool for extending the capability of existing CAD systems. In this paper, we present an approach to implement a practical knowledge-based system for the machinery layout design of a ship engine room. The knowledge-base is implemented and verified in the actual CAD environment of a ship engine room, named MADES, which we develop in this study. The approaches presented in this paper provide a practical example of a knowledge-based system for complex design problems, and can also provide guidance on implementing an integrated design expert system that extends the capability of existing CAD systems.