The theoretical premise of MDL is based on a "mechanical engineering" theory of design communication developed from a more general theory of linguistic understanding. The theory states that the content of design documents or the information model, is related to the conceptual structure of the design, whose communication through design documents comprises the goal of the designer. If the theory holds, the claim is that MDL can induce a model of the design, including the functions and components of the design and their relations by learning over the design text associated with the product (CAD). What do I mean by "understanding" the design, though? Professor Eastman at UCLA, who has done extensive work on formalizing product modeling, has identified three criteria for understanding a design, whether it's a building or an airplane; 1) the vocabulary, which describes the functions and components of the design (IR/NLP); 2) the aggregation of functions and components (CLUSTERING); and 3) the decomposition of the design, how functions and components are inter-related (BELIEF NETWORK).
| BEST Lab | Department of Mechanical Engineering | University of California at Berkeley