Adaptation of design cases is usually the most
challenging part in building any case-based reasoning design
system. The success of the adaptation process in finding
a solution for a new design problem determines the success
of the entire case-based reasoning (CBR) system. The techniques
used for generating design solutions have many common aspects
among the various engineering design classes that make
them amenable to be captured in a generic framework for
an acceptable level of abstraction. This paper proposes
a design-plan-oriented methodology for adapting design
cases to produce a solution to a new design problem in
the domain of engineering design. The proposed methodology
uses multicase adaptation and case built-in adaptation
knowledge to produce a design plan for a new design problem.
We first define the model of case representation to work
with the proposed methodology. We then define the overall
structure of the procedural framework of this methodology
and its subprocesses. The system is then demonstrated through
an application from the structural engineering domain.