Successful past design is the largest accumulation of expertise in the entire manufacturing sector and effective exploitation needs to structure this store of information. This paper shows that the design model under which this information is going to be used greatly influences the structuring process. Within design function deployment past designs should be structured as (a) a product concept, (b) a solution concept, (c) an embodiment design and (d) a detailed design, for efficient reuse. Illustrative examples are provided to explain their reuse. The methods for representing the structured information are also described.

This paper reviews the current research that has been carried out under the 'design reuse' umbrella. It classifies and discusses the work carried out in design reuse under seven categories, namely:(a) focused innovation, (b) cognitive studies on design reuse, (c) computational perspective of design reuse, (d) use of standard components, (e) design reuse tools and methods, (f) design reuse systems and (g) issues in design reuse.In the light of this discussion it proposes future areas of work to enable design reuse to become an accepted tool for systematic design.

This paper presents an overview of the research carried out in feature-based design (FBD). Detailed definitions of features are presented and a summary on the work that has been carried out in areas such as feature taxonomies, mapping, validation, constraints in FBD, interfaces, engineering information storing schemes and the object-oriented approach is provided. A way forward is explored and a recommendation for further research is suggested in order to minimize production lead time and cut down capital costs by introducing and implementing methodologies for the automation of complex model creation.

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Haptic perception of fine surface features is a fundamental modality to identify virtual objects. Roughness and stickiness, which are modeled as surface textures and friction respectively, are the main characteristics in terms of haptics. This research is aimed at the haptic rendering method of fine surface features based on the analysis of the surface profile. Functionally generated surface features are employed for the haptic rendering of surface textures and surface friction. Haptic rendering of anisotropic surface -surface having a dominant feature direction, and haptic rendering of heterogeneous surface -surface with a varied feature density, are investigated. Experimental measurements and prototype system implementations have been done to show the fidelity of the proposed surface feature modeling methods.