Graph Rewriting Techniques in Engineering Design

Capturing human knowledge underlying the design and engineering of products has been among the main goals of computational engineering since its very beginning. Over the last decades, various approaches have been proposed to tackle this objective. Among the most promising approaches is the application of graph theory for representing product structures by defining nodes representing entities and edges representing relations among them. The concrete meaning of these structures ranges from geometry representations over hierarchical product breakdowns to functional descriptions and flows of information or resources. On top of these graph structures, graph rewriting techniques provide another powerful layer of technology. By enabling the formal definition of rules for transforming graph structures, they allow on the one hand side to formally capture the engineering development process. On the other hand, the assembly of rewriting rules into graph grammars allows for an exhaustive search of the solution space of the engineering problem at hand. In combination with search strategies, an automated optimization of the design under given constraints and objectives can be realized. The paper provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in graph rewriting and its applications in engineering design, with a focus on the built environment. It concludes with a discussion of the progress achieved and the missing research gaps.