Do basic schemata facilitate embodiment design

There is a positive correlation between the number of generated alternative product concepts and their quality. Many different approaches/methods/tools have been developed to facilitate synthesis of alternative product concepts based on variations of physical laws, material, geometry and geometrical position. One of such tools is SoPHY (Synthesis of PHYsical laws), which is based on chaining of physical laws and complementary basic schemata. An experiment was designed, which is the first in series of experiments which are planned to asses various aspects of the use of the method/computer tool. The assumption tested in the experiment was that basic schemata generated by the computer tool (automatic phase) offered appropriate guidance for generating alternative embodiments due to more focused approach (manual phase). The presentation of the experiment and its results are the focus of the paper.