Restart, ICAD focus

Moral: ICAD, KBE, and truth engineering

The last post presented responses by GenAI/LLM types to my writings on KBE. Not bad in terms of regurgitation. What we are dealing with are mirrors and halls of mirrors. We will get there and explain this more thoroughly. 

Before we get to that point, I need to bring forward information obtained from work in the '90s and the 2000s (as in, pre-2010) that applies directly to knowledge systems helping people who are heavily trained and very much mathematically astute. That's the KBE part. 

Tonight, I was reading on constraint satisfaction which was a huge part of the object-oriented modeling of ICAD which I used for 15 years to solve problems of note. Where is this known? In the industrial / commercial world, we did not get lots of air time. You solved a problem and moved on. KBE was in that situation, for the most part.

But, poking around, I have found sufficient material to pull together an explanation for why KBE was, and is, important. Of note, my view is from the role of engineering support (where the mathematicians hang out) as I am not a degreed engineer. But, I was there, working on teams, observing, and have studied the whole of the basis for that phenomenon for two decades now. Of late, I have been discussing matters with folks of that training. 

Let's start with some links. These are related to the theme of ICAD, KBE, and truth engineering from several levels and angles, including the top-down issues plus plenty of technical material. Some of these are articles are recently recoverd (use of the "wayback" approach, for instance). 

• Papers (technology, computing, ...) - The Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. is supporting this work as important to the future. Some papers are listed at this site. 
• Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE): Update - Contemporary look at the issues seen during a major project that successfully did the deed of digital definition on a huge scale.  
  
• Geometric/Knowledge Modeling Challenges - Anticipating the "twin" that has been brought forth digitally. 
  
• Knowledge-based Engineering and the ICAD System - 
• Practical Issues of AI - From a 1994 look at the issues, after a major accomplishment was seen. 

With regard to ICAD, we see this from 2001. 

"For example, at Airbus UK, the design of Wing spars was reduced from 480 man weeks to 12 - a 97.5% lead-time reduction. Similarly, Jaguar Cars saw a 94% lead-time reduction in XK8 body panel development, and their collaborative headlamp program was reduced from 8 weeks to only 2 days."

And, this refers to activity that was precision work within the situation of complicated processes. Not mindless pretend by misusing mathemtical computing, as we seem to be witnessing. 

CAD to ICAD

This is an example of KBE (used another tool) from the military side of things. 

• Scenario-Based Affordability Assessment Tool - From Wright-Patterson, this is an indication of the power of KBE. Glueware was one major facility which helped handle the complexity of different types of representation needed to handle real world dynamics. 

Auditing, in the world? The firms that head this up are bean-counting types. We need real engineering oversight. KBE assists in that. And, engineers need to drive the unfoldment as well as maintain the motivation. On the other hand, we support folks can add to the dialog from our prespective. 

--- Note, on the coming series ---

I will start with a Patent, discuss its approach and motivations, and then lean toward the long history of linear methods as we saw come forth sufficiently to be exploited, wrongly, by machine learning. Tsk, guys. Let's go back to the drawing board, with the mathematicians in tow, and look at a history of decisions with ramifications which are obvious. Along with the technical stuff, we will look at the cultural (psychological) situations that influenced the decisions. All of this is due to several past accomplishments getting little press at the time, yet, in some cases, lessons learned then are very much contributing to success today (which has continued over the years). 

Technically, we will look at Lagrange and Hamilton and contemporaries. That is to tie the work desired by the biologists to that of operations research and its mathematics as being important to knowledge handling while at the same time bringing in the true "artificial intelligence" focus as it motivated search for proper, and mature, means. 

Remarks: Modified: 10/24/2025

10/24/2025 --