A Case Study in the Use of Design Exemplar as a Search and Retrieval Tool Available to Purchase

This paper presents a case study examining the utility of design exemplar technology as a search and retrieval tool with respect to retrieving mold inserts for a tire manufacturing company. Limitations of using the geometric-based exemplar approach such as tediousness of authoring exemplars and time complexity are identified. These limitations are addressed by developing a new parametric-based exemplar approach. This approach calculates a set of maxima and minima based on the specifications of the query mold insert. The design exemplar is essentially useful to prototype the query mechanism. However due to time complexity, the parametric approach was implemented as a dedicated software package.