Caedre: a Product Platform to Support Creation and Evaluation of Advanced Computer Aided Engineering Tools

The UK DTI/EPSRC 1999 workshop on “Future Issues for Design Research” [1] highlighted the need for better integration and evaluation of computational design support tools resulting from fundamental design method research. Widespread anecdotal evidence and substantial first hand experience and observation, suggest that practical software implementation difficulties are the major cause of this acknowledged problem. Some problems result from an ignorance of, or failure to apply, fundamental software engineering principles. However, others are specific to the particular nature of computational design tool research. This paper aims to identify these difficulties and describe how CaeDRe, a Computer aided engineering Design Research environment, has been designed with the aim of alleviating them. Its application is intended to enable the rapid, robust implementation of research design methods that are suitable for empirical evaluation in academic and industrial settings. This will allow early evaluation and feedback on knowledge structures, method logic and usability to increase the likelihood of successful adoption in practice.