The drawings archive of a company is an important font of information that could be effectively used during the design process.
In fact, it is a collection of known and proven solutions regarding design problems and, moreover, the drawings include a variety of information useful to design such as physical principles to achieve a function or solutions of specific design problems.
The use of these data is however conditioned by easiness of access to the information.
Usually, the drawings archive is not structured in a useful manner for the design and the retrieving of the information contained requires effort and time that are not often available to the designer.
The use of database systems and informatics tools, as Product Data Management (PDM) or Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) systems, can allow company to add more attributes to the drawing during its storage, allowing a different access to the information.
This work proposes the develop of a methodology about the organization of the stored information based on the functional structure of a product and in relation to the standards required.
The study is devoted to demonstrate how much data are hidden into the historical archives of a company and how much their use could be useful during the design process.
References
- Viganó R., Use of drawings archive for design process, Applied Mechanics and Materials ,Vol. 490, pp. 573-579, 2014
- Rosa F., Rovida E., Viganó R., Embodiment for requirements, International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM), pp. 1-14, 2015, Springer Paris