How to Represent "Intelligent" Components in a Product Model

This paper presents a multi-level approach to define a product model. It is based on the concept of what we call “Intelligent” Component. In order to be able to manage contextually the different types of knowledge involved during the design process, the multi-level model reflects the different steps of the process itself. To describe the approach an applicative example related to shaft design has been implemented. We first illustrate how to define an “Intelligent” Component for shaft design, and, then, how to extend a single-part approach to a library of mechanical "intelligent" components that allow to develop complex models. It permits to show how a multi-level product model is able to capture and represent the design process from the preliminary to the detail stage, formalising all the information concerning the behaviour of the model within different application contexts. 2 L. Susca, F. Mandorli & C. Rizzi