An intent-driven paradigm for feature-based design

A very important advantage of a feature-based modelling (FBM) system is claimed to be its ability to capture and carry designer’s intents (DI’s), although this last term is rarely clearly defined. Feature’s extra nongeometrical semantics, that are closely related to such designer’s intents, are used by many applications but never related back to designer’s intents. Therefore, adopting the approach of defining of designer’s intents helps define the role of features in the geometric design and, indeed, allows future feature-based modelling systems to better represent, store and reuse such information. Moreover, it allows a more formal approach for manipulating, verifying and maintaining DI’s throughout the design process, which is an invaluable support for really intelligent CAD systems. This paper presents Designer’s Intents in the feature-based modelling context and exposes a methodology used to effectivelly capture and manage and verify this extra information.