Design Languages

Today engineering design may be characterised as being on a craftmanship like level. It is difficult to separate single activites, only the final result is documented (not the reasoning and verifications), standard "machines", "processes" and "materials" are not utilised and a design process can not be reproduced with known quality of the results. The change of engineering design these years could be characterised as a shift from craftmanship towards industrialisation.
Application of information technology plays a crusial role in achieving industrialisation of engineering design. The goal of this project is to contribute to the next generation CAD systems focusing on the improvement of syntehsis and documentation. To be able to syntehsise in an interplay seems to require the existence of design languages which allow a designer to "spell" a design solution formally in such a way that properties can be derived from a design model.
This project takes a a starting point that four languges are necessary to design: process, function, organ and part languges. Until now a generic structure of a design languges has been identified for parts, that consist of wirksurfaces, wirkmaterial, wirkskeletons and syntactical rules.