Next generation design tools capture domain knowledge and experience with built-in rules and tools for design engineers.
Products reflect more than just their components.
They reflect the cumulative design, engineering, and manufacturing knowledge of the organizations that create them. They achieve this objective by progressively automating lower level repeated tasks, as well as higher level product development processes. Knowledge is power. Which is why, when it comes right down to it, that knowledge-based systems are both sought and feared. The one thing that these both of these groups have in common is the belief that knowledge is valuable.