Sabine Bartsch, Elke Teich

Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany

Multi-modal representation of construction processes in the mechanical engineering domain

The goal of this paper is to explore the modes of representation of computer-aided design (CAD) processes in mechanical engineering. In this domain, typically various modes of expression are employed for the representation of construction processes, including different media (e.g., natural language text, drawings of 3D-objects, programming code). We present some initial results from a systemic-functionally motivated analysis of a multi-modal corpus compiled from this domain. The analysis is guided by the following questions:

- Do the different modes of expression represent the same or different kinds of information? How do the different modes chunk up this information? What is the relation between the commonly employed modes (e.g., natural language text elaborating a picture)?

- Which modes are employed to represent which kinds of information? What are their individual contributions to the knowledge communicated (e.g., natural language texts representing construction processes, pictures representing construction products)?

- To what extent are the different modes integrated (e.g., separate documents or one document)? Do they relate to each other explicitly (e.g., through cohesion in one document) or implicitly (e.g., reference across documents)?