Currently, there exists a line of research in mechanical CAD that is directed towards using AI and knowledge engineering ideas, but truly unifying approaches in this respect are lacking. The authors hope to fill this gap via a logic-based, theoretical approach. A formulation is given for how a designer's apprentice (or a design workbench) can be established. The relevance of naive physics and commonsense reasoning in machine design are demonstrated. As for the software development methodology several aspects of software engineering are considered. A design base language which is built upon logic programming and object-oriented programming paradigm is proposed. © 1990.