摘要：Conceptual design lies in the early stage of a complex product development process, requiring not only considering the product's function and structure but also its social and environmental impacts. The design and decision made at the conceptual design stage have a significant influence on the success of the product development. Thus, exploring advanced conceptual design theories and methodologies and their applications has been considered as an important stage of a new product development, and it is currently a hot research topic in the engineering design field. The existing design methodologies have achieved extensive applications in engineering design, such as axiomatic design, collaborative design, agent-based design, and nfused design. Computer-aided design is widely seen as an enabling technology for supporting the scheme evaluation, geometric modeling, and structural feature design of new product development. Furthermore, within the industry engineering areas, there are strong commercial drivers to reuse and extend existing methodologies. Sometimes they are often undertaken in a highly coupled manner for a specific product design. However, as the complexity of product system and the diversity of product functions increase, the need for advanced design methods and tools becomes stronger. Therefore, conceptual design, as a rapidly changing field, developing new and advanced theories and methodologies dedicated to product innovation is required.
