An Ontological Inquiry into the Role and
  Meaning of Geometry in Engineering
                 Design
                                  Paulina WIEJAK a,b
                 a Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
          b Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA), ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy


Engineering design is a creative process that turns ideas into reality. It is a collaborative
work of designers and engineers, who not only need to apply their knowledge and inven-
tiveness to create new products and solve the technical problems but should also adapt
these solutions to fulfil the expectations of their clients and to meet certain restrictions
(material, technology, environment, economy, etc.).
     According to the classic book by Pahl and Beitz “Engineering Design. A System-
atic Approach” the product development process can be divided into four phases: task
clarification, conceptual design, embodiment design and detail design. The latter two
are not only well understood but also well aided with computer-based technologies (e.g.
Computer-Aided Design or Computer-Aided Manufacturing). Moreover, these tools are
continuously improved to meet the needs of the industry.
     During the conceptual design phase, after clarification of the task, engineers must
identify the essential problems of the product, establish function structures, search for
adequate working principles and try to merge these into a working structure to find a
principle solution. Designers here are not equipped with advanced technology and still
need to depend on hand drawing, diagrams, matrices and other techniques.
     In this research, I will concentrate on methodologies and techniques for the advance-
ment in the area of conceptual design. In particular, I aim to provide a better understand-
ing of the role and meaning that geometry has in the product design cycle by analyzing
some real examples. In my view, this will lead to the introduction of the notion of ‘con-
text’ and ‘role’ into the CAD and CAM systems. I am not focusing here on geometry as
a mathematical theory but on the geometrical representation that carries meaning. In that
sense, geometry intersects all stages of the product design.