A Comparative Analysis of Design Automation Methods: Capabilities, Features and Technology Assessment

For industries, time and cost are the prime challenges in product development. In order to address this challenge industries have moved towards the adoption of design automation techniques. Design automation can be understood as the set of methods or tools that help in automating the design process. Design automation can be achieved using different automation methods such as Geometric Automation (GeA), Knowledge Intensive CAD (KIC) and Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) for solving a given problem, however there is no systematic way for choosing a particular method for the given problem. Moreover, from the understanding of the design system development life-cycle procedure there is hardly any evidence with respect to technology mapping for realizing the acquired knowledge. This paper proposes a technology assessment stage, where the technologies for the development of the required design automation system can be identified, for which the relevant design automation methods can be utilized. This paper provides an understanding of design automation. Next the paper discusses the various design automation methods and their capabilities. The paper further provides a comparative analysis of different methods with respect to the design automation features. Finally, the paper proposes the development of technology selection framework to address the technology assessment stage, which helps in identifying the different technologies required for developing the design system.