TR076: The System for Knowledge-Based Layout (SKY) Project

This report is about the system for knowledge-based layout which focuses on industrial facilities' conceptual layout. Layout is very important in industrial facilities such as a factory, a warehouse, a distribution center and so on.

Layout used to be made usually according to the designers' experiences. Experience may produce preconception that can obstruct the designers to reach the best solution. This system explores every possibility to look for the best solution under very basic constraint such as site conditions and facility requirements.

This system consists of three parts. They are adjacency definition component, layout generation component and evaluation component. The adjacency component defines departmental adjacencies according to their requirements. The layout generation component generates all possible layout by search technique with pruning by some rules. The evaluation component evaluates alternative layouts according to the preference factors entered by the user.

This report describes the background of the system and the details of the system which includes the algorithm of reasoning, knowledge representation, computer source code and so on.