Matthew I. Campbell, Jonathan Cagan
Computational Design Laboratory and
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
AND
Kenneth Kotovsky
Department of Psychology
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
A new theory of engineering design known as A-Design is introduced that models the workings of realistic engineering design in a complex adaptive system of interacting software agents. The methodology is general enough to be used on a variety of search problems, however the motivation behind the research is to create design configurations. The system constructs meaningful designs from a catalog of electro-mechanical components based on a variety of user-defined objectives while accommodating changes that might occur in the focus of the problem.