【正文】 to develop knowledge based systems (KBS), and finally, to provide a conceptual base for reusing the knowledge. In this sense, the entities and structures defined in a knowledge model for design process of machining fixtures can be partially reused to develop new models for fixture design process, as the inspection or assembly fixture. The entities and structures reused has been defined using the method of knowledge template[4]. The work presented is a detailed proposition of the knowledge model for machining fixture design and the definition of the knowledge groups that can be reused in the inspection fixture design process, using the knowledge template method. Fig. 1 presents a general view of the contents of this ex Fig. 1. The structure of the work. planation. 2. Present state of fixture design process knowledge modelling The fixture concept arises from the need to establish a physical connection between part, and tool, and part and machinetool. This connection should fulfil some requirements for support the machining operation to carry out. The mainly functionality of the fixture is to support, locate and clamp the part to the machine tool. However, in order to interpreting correctly the needed knowledge for develop the fixture design process, it is necessary to define the basic information related with this process according to the classification exposed in Table 1. All this information has been represented in models that describe the entities, attributes and relationships between each knowledge group in the fixture design process. The definition of these models can be carried out using methodologies that describe the activities to capture, represent and reuse the knowledge of a design system, for example MOKA and CommonKADS. The MOKA methodology is based on the definition of two models. These models allow to capture and to structure the knowledge of a system. The first model, uses a group of forms (ICARE: Illustrations, Constraints, Activities, Rules,Entities) that allow to capture and to represent the knowledge in a semistructured way。 Fixture design 1. Introduction The continuous challenge that involves the knowledge representation hasoriented to many different research groups to develop methodologies that describe stages for capture and representation of the knowledge in design and manufacturing systems [1–3]. This has allowed to define knowledge models as a tool that helps us to clarify the structure of intensive knowledge and informationprocessing tasks. In this sense, a knowledge model provides a specification of the data and inference processes required by the system of study [4]. A first approach in the development of knowledge models applied to machining fixtures design process has been proposed by Hunter [5]. During the last decade, the use of modelling techniques has allowed usto represent the fixture design process employed in some manufacturing operations, such as machining, assembly and inspection, etc. [6]. Due to the plexity and the wide scope of the fixture design process, different research groups have been focused in the analysis of specific activities of this process,such as fixture configuration, tolerance analyses, stability and accessibility. A great number of investigations has taken in consideration the way inwhich represent the knowledge used in the fixture design process. These researches are focused in the documentation of the design parameters, the structuring of the information of the fixture and the description of the fixture elements used in fixture design [2,7]. On the other hand, the implementation of the knowledge used in the fixture design can be classified regarding the artificial intelligence technique(AI) used [8,9] and on the automation level of the design system[2]. However, whatever it is the artificial intelligence technique