A design reuse model

The problem with design reuse in engineering practice is the apparent lack of any formal guidelines or approach to help encourage its application and thereby allow designers to effectively benefit from previous domain knowledge. In response to this situation, this paper formalises an approach to reuse in engineering design . The resulting Design Reuse Model consists of processes: design by reuse, domain exploration and design for reuse, and six knowledge-related components: design requirements, sources of domain knowledge, reuse library, domain model, evolved design model and completed design model. The reuse processes are then proposed as the essential aspects of computationally supporting reuse, and as such are used to indicate the failure of existing support to recognise the totality of design reuse.