Geometric design spaces

Abstract: "One of the goals of design research is the creation of systems that can be active participants in the design process, in contrast to many current systems that are primarily passive repositories of information. A number of techniques have been employed for these purposes, including constraint satisfaction, synthesis by analogy, prototype refinement and search in a space of designs; the last of these is the subject of this paper. Two formalisms for search in a geometric design space, structure grammars and solid grammars, are introduced."