Engineering Design Synthesis: Understanding, Approaches and Tools

1: Understanding.- 1 Defining synthesis: on the senses and the logic of design synthesis.- 2 Insight, design principles and systematic invention.- 3 Synthesis and theory of knowledge: general design theory as a theory of knowledge, and its implication to design.- 4 Theory of technical systems and engineering design synthesis.- 5 A knowledge operation model of synthesis.- 2: Approaches.- 6 Two approaches to synthesis based on the domain theory.- 7 Using the concept of functions to help synthesise solutions.- 8 Design catalogues and their usage.- 9 TRIZ, the Altshullerian approach to solving innovation problems.- 3: Tools.- 10 Synthesis of schematic descriptions in mechanical design.- 11 An approach to compositional synthesis of mechanical design concepts using computers.- 12 Synthesis based on function-means trees: Schemebuilder.- 13 Design processes and context for the support of design synthesis.- 14 Retrieval using configuration spaces.- 15 Creative design by analogy.- 16 Design patterns and creative design.- 17 FAMING: supporting innovative design using adaptation - a description of the approach, implementation, illustrative example and evaluation.- 18 Transforming behavioural and physical representations of mechanical designs.- 19 Automatic synthesis of both the topology and numerical parameters for complex structures using genetic programming.