Rather than using software to draw and analyse a designer’s vision,
as typically happens with CAD programs, computational design tools such as Autodesk wants to use that computing power to generate the idea
itself—by running through a nearly infinite number of ways to build the
same product.
According to Autodesk, here’s how it works. You type in a set of constraints for the product, say a chair.
Then an algorithm will go through a nearly infinite set of results and
head towards ones that are going to satisfy the designer. The program might start off with 1,000 ways to make
the same chair, and then intermix what it sees as the most effective
components of those 1,000 chairs to make 1,000 new options.
As a computer isn't constrained by preconceived notions of what a chair
should look like, it goes
through a million iterations of the same chair in the time that it
would take the designer to describe just one. It's a process that can be applied to everything that involves drawing things including buildings, cars and consumer products. But it isn’t aimed at replacing human insight: people are
still better at making more subjective selections over issues such as
aesthetics. Yet algorithm-based design does serve up a panoply of options
helping designers generate and develop ideas.
