Reference: Peligry, Y. P. An Illustration of the SHADE Concepts: The Unit and Dimension Agent. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, March, 1994.
Abstract: Concurrent engineering development requires an effective communication among developers. The SHADE (SHAred Dependency Engineering) project proposes a framework for information sharing and decision coordination. It consists in three components: a shared knowledge representation, communication protocols and communication services. The Unit and Dimension Agent has been developed within the SHADE philosophy. It gives an overview of the SHADE's concepts. It emphasizes on the first component of the SHADE framework, the knowledge representation, because this paper focuses on one particular agent. Definitions of units and dimensions are read by the agent, which then checks several characteristics of the definitions such as completeness and consistency. It is able to perform non trivial operations on units and dimensions, such as returning the dimension of a quantity or simplifying complex expressions. The algorithm used is explained through a few simple examples.
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