An approach to providing computational support with an expert shell is discussed with the scope of an industrial wire harness design, especially at a manufacturing stage. Key issues include the development of an architecture that supports a frequent design change among engineers associated with different parts of the wiring design process and the development of hierarchical representations that capture the different characteristics (e.g., connectivity, configuration) of the harnesses. The abstraction of design information results in features, while the abstraction of drawing elements leads to the definition of objects. These abstractions are essential for efficient transactions among people and computer tools in a domain that involves numerous interacting constraints. In this paper the strategy for the problem decomposition, the definition of features, and the ways in which features are shared by various operations and design changes, are discussed. We conclude with a discussion of some of the issues raised by the project and the steps underway to address them.