Design++, a platform that makes design automation feasible
Design++ is a rule-based solution infrastructure for design and engineering automation that allows an application development team concentrate on engineering and business rules rather than on software technology. It is specifically tailored to the engineering domain with its ability to integrate and drive CAD and other engineering point solutions.
The Value
For Engineer-to-Order companies that wish to create a sustainable competitive advantage Design++ makes feasible the automation of their unique engineering and design processes. It significantly reduces the solution development effort by minimizing the need for infrastructure development that represents more than 70% of an application.
In addition to significantly improving engineering productivity and quality, a Design++ based solution secures in its knowledge bases a company's unique intellectual engineering assets in a form that is easily perpetuated and maintained in the future. It also re-directs a company's scarce engineering resources from repetitive product re-creation tasks to higher value product development and refinement tasks.
How Does Design++ Work?
A company's product and process experts capture their engineering and design rules into Design++ knowledge bases for automated reuse. The Design++ system supports rule capture with an engineering familiar product structure modeling paradigm.
The components of the hierarchical Design++ models represent assemblies, sub-assemblies and physical parts. Rules live within attributes of these components. In a typical application, rules determine product configuration, engineering related values, dimensioning of parts, their placement, and other geometric properties.
Design++ Dynamic Configurator expands models according to the configuration rules that live in the assembly and subassembly component incorporating only those assemblies, subassemblies and parts that are needed to create a design that meets the provided requirements.
Design++ engineering rules determine the properties of each assembly, sub-assembly, and part to meet the functional requirements of that assembly or part. This includes the proper dimensioning of the parts.
Design++ geometric rules then determine the placement of the parts and render them in an integrated CAD system.
All rules use the same rule-structure simplifying the solution development effort.
In a Design++ based solution Design++ Execution Order Controller analyses the captured rules and determines automatically in which order these rules are executed to create a fully engineered design. Thus, Design++ automatically infers the engineering process. It determines the optimal order both during "first-pass" design and during any subsequent engineering and design changes. The related Design++ Intelligent Change Manager correctly propagates any requested change as far as required, but no further. These engines keep the design consistent with the captured rule base and provided inputs at all times.
More information
The Design++ success at Robertson Ceco Corp., ([RCC] now a part of NCI Building Systems Inc. [NCI]) has been independently documented by sources:
An article in AECbytes:
http://www.aecbytes.com/buildingthefuture/2005/RCCstudy.html
An interview with VP of RCC by Daratech (a market research firm): "Robertson Ceco Automates Design Process, Leverages Designer Knowledge"
"Challenges and Rewards in Automating the Engineering and Design Process" a Presenation at FIATECH 2005 by Robert Carr, RCC VP http://www.fiatech.org/pdfs/pastpres/spring2005/carr.pdf