Title
An architecture for exploring large design spaces
Abstract
We describe an architecture for exploring very large design spaces, for example, spaces that arise when design candidates are generated by combining components systematically from component libraries. A very large number of candidates are methodically considered and evaluated. This architecture is especially appropriate during the stage of conceptual design when high-level design decisions are under consideration, multiple evaluation criteria apply, and a designer seeks assurance that good design possibilities have not been overlooked. We present a filtering technique based on a dominance criterion that can be used to select, from millions of design candidates, a relatively small number of promising candidates for further analysis. The dominance criterion is lossless in that it insures that each candidate not selected is inferior to at least one of the selected candidates. We also describe an interactive interface in which the selected designs are presented to the designer for analysis of tradeoffs and further exploration. In our current implementation, the computational load is distributed among a large number of workstations in a client-server computing environment. We describe the results of experiments using the architecture to explore designs for hybrid electric vehicles. In a recent experiment more than two million distinct designs were evaluated.
Year
Venue
Keywords
1998
AAAI/IAAI
good design possibility,million distinct design,dominance criterion,design candidate,large number,high-level design decision,selected design,conceptual design,selected candidate,large design space,client server
Field
DocType
ISBN
Small number,Conceptual design,Architecture,Computer science,Workstation,Filter (signal processing),Theoretical computer science,Large numbers,Artificial intelligence,Computer engineering,Machine learning,Lossless compression
Conference
0-262-51098-7
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
12
1.85
2
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
John R. Josephson11003119.16
B. Chandrasekaran22338685.83
Mark Carroll3427.19
Naresh Iyer4234.40
Bryon Wasacz5121.85
Giorgio Rizzoni625856.95
Qingyuan Li7121.85
David A. Erb8121.85