Abstract:
Product Life Cycle Management promises management of all intellectual assets generated for
all life cycle phases of a product [1]. This includes supporting capture and structure of
information generated about an evolving product during the PD process [1]. Many structures
for product information [3, 4, 5, 6] and rationale information [7, 8] have been suggested, and
some turned into a tool, e.g. [7, 8]. However, a practical tool for automated capture and
structure of product information including rationale information without interrupting the
working of the designer, especially as a product evolves through the PD process, is yet to be
developed. The framework reported here has been developed by analysing the proceedings
from design experiments and literature to capture, segregate and store the information
generated in product design without interrupting designer. The main features of the
framework are implemented into the preliminary version of a software tool and evaluated for
the ease of use and reuse for designers and re-designers (re-users of rationale). The main
functions currently supported are: creation and modification of a three-dimensional assembly,
exploring the details of a version tree and product structure, and, exploring the events via
video/audio clips attached to the version tree.