USING THE POINTS OF LARGE CASES

We believe that case-based reasoning (CBR) will prove applicable to design, at least in part, as we have seen designers making extensive use of past cases. Construction of useful systems, however, requires the resolution of many open issues. In this paper we consider three issues in particular: (1) What sort of content should be captured in a design case? (2) How should the content of a complex case be segmented into chunks for use? (3) How should the resulting chunks be indexed for retrieval? These are among the issues we are seeking to address through construction of Archie-II, a case-based aid for conceptual design in architecture. In addition to our approaches to these issues, this paper also discusses our strategic choice to build a design aiding system as opposed to a system that generates designs on its own. © 1993, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.