Computer-automated design

[12] The concept of CAutoD perhaps first appeared in 1963, in the IBM Journal of Research and Development,[1] where a computer program was written.

More recently, traditional CAD simulation is seen to be transformed to CAutoD by biologically-inspired machine learning,[13] including heuristic search techniques such as evolutionary computation,[14][15] and swarm intelligence algorithms.

[16] To meet the ever-growing demand of quality and competitiveness, iterative physical prototyping is now often replaced by 'digital prototyping' of a 'good design', which aims to meet multiple objectives such as maximised output, energy efficiency, highest speed and cost-effectiveness.

At present, many designs and refinements are mainly made through a manual trial-and-error process with the help of a CAD simulation package.

The EA based multi-objective "search team" can be interfaced with an existing CAD simulation package in a batch mode.

This way, the evolutionary technique makes use of past trial information in a similarly intelligent manner to the human designer.

A number of finely evolved top-performing candidates will represent several automatically optimized digital prototypes.