Product Modeling Based on Knowledge Fusion in Virtual Environment

Following researches on the knowledge-based product design, product modeling based on knowledge fusion is studied in a virtual environment. Knowledge fusion is the energy sources of product innovation designs. Because a knowledge representation method is the main content of knowledge fusion, production rule way, semantic network, predicate, object-oriented and case-based representations are discussed. Using agents with object-oriented method, the knowledge can be represented as a set. The product knowledge set is divided into two subset: text knowledge and knowledge of engineering graphics that is a different form. Manipulation of the subset knowledge and fusion method is described. The paper also describes a six-tuple function in an agent data structure. A virtual environment computation model is proposed, and a practical example given.