Abstract: In order to ensure the conformance of a structure to its original specification, to regenerate a structure in accordance with technological developments, or to compare a structure to another known structure, a process for analyzing an entire physical structure(21) includes a step(16) for executing set-based operations on subsets of the structure and producing a display of these subsets in statistical, structural or functional form.

Abstract: A tool for verifying a process for producing a physical system by automatically deducing the functional description of the system produced. From the concrete description GND which contains the elements of a physical system and the connections between these elements, the tool automatically deduces the functional description VHD of this system with the aid of an inference engine MOTINF and a filter FILTER. The inference engine selects rules from a library GRL and programmed functions for loading into the filter. Once loaded, the filter regroups the elements of the description GND, thus producing a structural abstraction of the description GND, and simultaneously produces a functional description of each regrouping in formal language. The accumulation of the functional descriptions thus obtained provides the functional description VHD of the system.