A general synthesis engine : making MICON domain-independent

MICON's synthesis and knowledge-acquisition tools. Ml and CGEN, provide a design paradigm and knowledge representation scheme currently used to create computer systems. However, the techniques employed by these tools can be generalized to create a synttiesis engine which can be used for a variety of engineering design problems. This paper describes the design of a domain independent Ml and CGEN. Two example applications in mechanical design and design environments are presented.