DOI:
Abstract:
ParMan combines the use of agent communication protocols, constraint logic programming, and a graphical presentation interface to yield an intelligent parametric design tool supporting collaborative engineering. This provides one of the first complete, end-to-end applications of distributed knowledge-level communication among engineering tools, as envisioned by PACT (Cutkosky et al. 1993). In addition, it represents a significant extension of parametric design to a distributed setting. This paper describes the underlying technologies of ParMan, based on CLP(R), the Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language, and knowledge-based facilitation agents.