An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Industrial Design Support

The process of Industrial Design extends from market analysis, conceptualization, form generation to performance prediction, engineering analysis and user analysis etc. This requires a wide range of design knowledge and techniques from different disciplines. Computer-based support to industrial design is limited because the majority of the CAD systems deal with only geometric models and representations. The recent advancement in generative techniques utilizing evolutionary computation methods provides an opportunity for the study of more creative and systematic ways of supporting the industrial design process. However, one of the problems associated with the existing generative techniques is the difficulty in evaluating a large number of solutions generated by a generative system. This paper addresses this problem by presenting a system framework for industrial design support through an integrated application of Artificial Intelligence techniques.