During the initial stage of structural concept design, a few trial designs are proposed and compared in order to achieve a satisfactory intermediate plan for the use at the next stage of the design process. The trial designs are usually tentative and need to be refined gradually as the design process develops. Modification to the structure configuration is unavoidable, this usually includes changes in the orientation, dimension, position and material type of the components. The change of one part of the structure may result in the modification of many other directly or indirectly related components. Nevertheless the modification pattern of the related members is not unique, the choice and their combination being numerous. The modification in a structural configuration can be modelled as the process to recover the components consistency when it is temporarily disturbed after one of the components is changed. In this paper, first an experimental system for the structural configuration , which is base on AutoCAD and AutoLisp, is described, then the knowledge about the components consistency, knowledge representation and process are discussed.

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