1. A plant development knowledge system comprising: an assembly database storing a plurality of assembly objects, each of the assembly objects representative of a plant construction component and having an available context; and an inference engine coupled with the assembly database and comprising a modifiable inference module having inference rules, and configured to: infer a specified context from attributes of a construction project, wherein the specified context defines one or more design elements within one or more external tools; select an assembly object from the plurality of assembly objects that is related to the construction project according to the inference rules, the specified context, and the available context; instantiate a construction object that is representative of a physical construction object from the assembly object by deriving at least one physical attribute of the instantiated construction object based on at least one of the inference rule the specified context and the available context, wherein the least one physical attribute of the instantiated construction object corresponds to at least one physical dimension of the physical construction object; and configure an external tool to incorporate the instantiated construction object into a construction project model related to the specified context.