The design of the two-step gear reducer is a tedious and time-consuming process. For the purpose of improving the efficiency and intelligence of design process, case-based reasoning（CBR） technology was applied to the design of the two-step gear reducer. Firstly, the current design method for the two-step gear reducer was analyzed and the principle of CBR was described. Secondly, according to the characteristics of the reducer, three key technologies of CBR were studied and the corresponding methods were provided, which are as follows： （a） an object-oriented knowledge representation method, （b） a retrieval method combining the nearest neighbor with the induction indexing, and （c） a case adaptation algorithm combining the revision based on rule with artificial revision. Also, for the purpose of improving the credibility of case retrieval, a new method for determining the weights of characteristics and a similarity formula were presented, which is a combinatorial weighting method with the analytic hierarchy process（AHP） and roughness set theory. Lastly, according to the above analytic results, a design system of the two-step gear reducer on CBR was developed by VC＋＋, UG and Access 2003. A new method for the design of the two-step gear reducer is provided in this study. If the foregoing developed system is applied to design the two-step gear reducer, design efficiency is improved, which enables the designer to release from the tedious design process of the gear reducer so as to put more efforts on innovative design. The study result fully reflects the feasibility and validity of CBR technology in the process of the design of the mechanical parts.
