Application of constraint-based heuristics in collaborative design

Significant acceleration of today´s complex collaborative design processes can be achieved if team members are able to apply search heuristics that consider the simultaneous effect of all design constraints. We present the Active approach to Design Process Management (ADPM), whereby designers receive constraint-based feedback that enables them to apply these search heuristics effectively. To evaluate ADPM, we developed a design process evaluation environment called TeamSim. Evaluation results suggest that ADPM can reduce costly design iterations at the expense of extra, less costly, verification tool executions.