Configuration management in the HILDA system

HILDA (high level design assistance) is a prototype of a rule-based configurer that operates in a CAD (computer-aided design) framework. The configurer in HILDA adopts the approach of generalized templates for configuring design models, i.e. it typically requires only one generalized template for each CAD tool instead of one template per design model, as in most other systems. A generalized template relieves the designers of creating and maintaining templates and yet facilitates integration of any arbitrary number of CAD tools. In particular, it supports dynamic changes of design structures in the design process by providing features such as keywords for traversing design hierarchies at run time, multiple rules for representing alternative configuring paths, backtracking for performing depth-first search and a flexible strategy for selecting versions