Evolutionary design and re-design using design parameters and goals

Design parameters and goals play important roles in design. Design goals are the required functions of the design elements and are explicitly expressed by design parameters. Design parameters also indicate the relations among design elements, by which a constraint network can be constructed and some useful information can be induced. In this study, the mechanical design process is viewed to be the assignment of design goals and their realization through the evolutionary refinement of the design parameters. The design activities are processed on traditional computer-aided design systems by specifying the shapes of the design elements. Thus, an integrated design system based on the computer-aided design system is proposed to assign the design goals and refine the values of the design parameters along the design process. The proposed design system also provides some useful facilities to a designer such as the construction of a constraint network, an evolutionary design method and a re-design plan.