Summary

In this chapter, the fundamental issue of design was discussed. Design involves providing the solution to a specific problem that is specified by given Needs. Design can be applied at two broad levels, generally referred to as the architectural design level and the detailed design level. We discussed that architectural design is generally more abstract and applies at a high level, such as the System and Subsystem level. Detailed design, on the other hand, focuses more on detailed aspects of the overall solution and focuses on the structure of Subsystems, Assemblies, and Components.

We also discussed that the System Elements that we saw previously in Chapter 3, Systems and Interfaces, can actually take on different types. In the Ontology example in this chapter, these types were Logical, Functional, and Physical. We saw that Functional System Elements satisfy Logical System Elements, whereas Physical System Elements realize Functional System Elements.

The importance...