The invention disclosed herein integrates several technological concepts: novel three-dimensional accretive manufacturing mechanisms and processes; combinations of fiber materials with plastics, typically thermoplastics, in accretive manufacturing (three-dimensional printing, for example); position-awareness for manufacturing control systems; and computer-aided design optimization processes with novel feedbacks.

In various embodiments, a ranking application automatically ranks designs included in a design space based on user preference(s). The ranking application determines that a first design included in the design space is a first positive example of user preference(s). The ranking application then computes a score associated with a second design that is also included in the design space based on a first attribute value and a second attribute value. The first attribute value is associated with both the first design and an attribute and the second value is associated with both the second design and the attribute. Subsequently, the ranking application orders the designs based on the first score and a second score associated with the second design to generate a ranked list of designs. The ranking application then displays the ranked list of designs via a graphical user interface to facilitate exploration of the design space.

A method of determining disposition of a component supply unit including a component reel obtained by winding a component accommodating tape accommodating a component and a tape feeder that supplies the component accommodating tape drawn out from the component reel, for determining component supply unit disposition in which the component supply unit is disposed in a holding unit that holds the component supply unit, includes acquiring component supply unit information including information on the number of the component reel and constraint condition information including information related to a layout that is capable of being selected when the component supply unit is disposed in the holding unit, and determining the component supply unit disposition, based on the constraint condition information and the information on the number of the component reel.

A method for designing a circuit element of an integrated circuit (IC) includes receiving one or more desired characteristics of the circuit element from user input and iteratively determining a design solution through one or more simulations and modifications using a rule-set. The one or more desired characteristics are combined with other preset characteristics of the circuit element or the IC. A first model of the circuit element is defined and simulated to calculate performance. The first and subsequent models are modified by drawing on a rule-set of expert knowledge relating to general dependency of at least one design criterion, such as a physical, geometrical or performance characteristic, with another design criterion.

Disclosed is a robust topology optimization design method of a damping composite stiffened cylindrical shell box structure, comprising: constructing working load data, and obtaining circumferential target modal frequencies based on the working load data and the stiffened cylindrical shell box; laying constrained layer damping materials on the stiffened cylindrical shell box to construct a damping composite stiffened cylindrical shell box; constructing interval parameters based on the damping composite stiffened cylindrical shell box, and obtaining modal loss factor based on the interval parameters; constructing an objective function based on the modal loss factors, constructing design variables and constraint conditions based on the damping composite stiffened cylindrical shell box, integrating the objective function, design variables and constraint conditions to form an interval robust topology optimization model; updating the design variables based on the interval robust topology optimization model, and obtaining an optimized topology configuration of the damping composite stiffened cylindrical shell box.

Described herein is a method of designing micro-fluidic devices. A target cost function based on device design parameters is chosen. The performance of one or more design candidates is run in a simulation model. A design candidate with a cost function closest to the target cost function is chosen and modified in an optimization routine to provide a modified design candidate having modified device design parameters. The cost function for the modified initial design candidate is computed, and when the modified design candidate has a computed cost function that meets the target cost function, optimized device design parameters of an optimized device design are obtained. Additional optimization iterations may be performed as needed to arrive at an optimized device design. A micro-fluidic device based on the optimized device design is manufactured.

A novel implementation of particle swarm optimization termed Recursive Hierarchical Particle Swarm Optimization (RHPSO) is presented. An improved method for optimizing a complex solution space for any given mathematical function, where the mathematical function may be 1) finding optimal parameters such as topology, security, and routing in distributed/networked systems; 2) finding optimal frequency and channel assignments for telecommunication networks; and 3) code-breaking, searching a large solution space of ciphers for the one correct decryption.

A computer implemented method of routing a net of an electronic circuit is disclosed. The net connects a plurality of pins of the electronic circuit. The method includes selecting, using one or more computer systems, first and second main spine routing tracks for respective first and second groups of pins of the net. The method also includes generating, using one or more computer systems, a first main spine wire on the selected first main spine routing track and a second main spine wire on the selected second main spine routing track. A router configured to perform the method is also disclosed.

The present disclosure provides a method and system for determining a helicopter rotor airfoil. The method includes: randomly generating a sample point by using a Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method (S1); determining characterization equations of upper and lower airfoil surfaces of an airfoil based on the airfoil sample point by using a class shape transformation (CST) method (S2); performing dynamic characteristic simulation on the airfoil according to the characterization equations of the upper and lower airfoil surfaces by using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, to obtain a flow field characteristic of the airfoil (S3); establishing a mapping relationship between the sample point and the flow field characteristic by using a Kriging model, and training the mapping relationship by using a maximum likelihood estimation method and an expected improvement (EI) criterion, to obtain a trained mapping relationship (S4); determining an optimal sample point based on the trained mapping relationship by using Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) (S5); and determining a rotor airfoil based on the optimal sample point (S6). The method performs optimized design on aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil in a state with a changing incoming flow and a changing angle of attack, and can effectively alleviate dynamic stall in this state.

This application discloses a computing system implementing tools and mechanisms to generate a framework for a system-level design of an electronic system, wherein the system-level design includes multiple electronic designs from different electronic design automation tools. The tools and mechanisms can correlate design components in the electronic designs to different portions of the framework for the system-level design, and determine whether the electronic designs are congruent with the system-level design based, at least in part, on the correlation of the electronic designs to the different portions of the framework for the system-level design.