Integrating expert systems with solid modeling through interprocess communications and the applications interface specification.

摘要

Arguably the most elusive problems to automate in engineering are those that require a large degree of spatial reasoning. One of the most significant reasons for this has been the lack of appropriate software tools with which to perform research and development. The optimal software environment should integrate the symbolic reasoning capabilities of an expert system with the analytic reasoning capabilities of a solid modeling system. This paper describes such an environment, developed using interprocess communications and a standarized solid modeling interface language. This integration has resulted in a seamless coupling that provides an expert system with dynamic access to the full power of a solid modeling system. The details of the interprocess communications protocol, the solid modeling interface language, and the data dependency tracking technique are discussed. 10 refs., 5 figs.