A new approach to structure sharing

Structure sharing means fulfilment of several functions or functional properties by the same physical structure, and is an important concept in product design. However, few guidelines and methods for supporting structure sharing, especially on computers, are currently available. The aim of this paper is to present a new, computational approach, for supporting structure sharing in design, that can automatically create, and offer designers for evaluation, a variety of alternative solution principles as well as their potential, minimal, qualitative embodiments that can fulfil a given intended sensor functionality. These potential alternatives art structure-shared where possible.