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Nowadays, a large number of different tools that support early phases of design are available to engineers. In the past decade a specialized set of CAD-based tools were developed, that support the ideation process by generating different design alternatives according to the criteria given by the designer. Two types of tools are discussed in this paper: topology optimization and generative design tools. To investigate to what extent these tools are suitable for use in early design phases and what are the main differences between them, a study was conducted on an industrial case.

Since the operation of technical systems can be explained using physical laws, why then might we not use them explicitly in designing these systems? The characteristic initial binding variable, with which appropriate physical laws are sought, first needs to be extracted from the function of the future technical system. If there are several appropriate physical laws (i.e., operators), we evaluate them using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The most suitable is then selected with regard to the chosen criteria based on design requirements. When one physical law is not sufficient for the design of a technical system, several laws are linked together using binding variables to form a conceptual chain (i.e., macro-operator). Such a chain does not only contain supporting physical laws; physical laws indirectly introduce basic models of shape, their basic topology, geometry, and basic material properties into the chain. A prototype computer-aided design system is based on the prescriptive conceptual design model presented below.

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