A semantic style driving method for products' appearance design

Considering that industrial design (ID) processes are full of fuzzy, uncertain, dynamic and changing information, the traditional computer aided methods cannot work well. Based on ID, fuzzy theory, and aesthetics principles, the authors discuss the idea of driving the design process by semantics words. In the process, they attain customers' performance in term of semantics words, built some fuzzy evaluation models covering shape and color aesthetics rules, and associated aesthetics rules, to analysis the products' appearance design style. Semantic words drive the design process and carry through the whole process to reinforce the design objective. In the paper, the authors place emphasis on how to formalize products' shape features and how to process semantic words; also, they discuss the whole design process by the designed style driving method. The method has already been implemented in a machine tools CAID software system.