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Software to support the solution generation phase of the engineering design process has been developed in academia for decades. Computational synthesis software enables generation of solutions on both conceptual and embodiment level. This paper focuses on the class of parametric design, such as documented in mechanical engineering handbooks. Examples include machine elements such as bearings, springs, fasteners, transmissions, etc. A parametric synthesis tool automates the engineering design process from functional requirements to quantified solutions, for a single machine element. Since the amount of machine elements is vast and software development time should be low, a generic methodology is helpful to speed up this process. This paper discusses such a methodology to develop synthesis tools for the class of parametric designs. It includes an analysis-oriented approach to formalize the design process’ parameters in terms of embodiment, performance and scenario. Mathematical constraint solving techniques are used to generate candidate solutions. Graphical presentation and exploration of the solution space is done with interactive plots. A standardized layout for the graphical user interface is suggested to allow uniform and intuitive use. A demonstrator is developed using the described methodology and several challenges are discussed for improved constraint solving techniques, more advanced visualization and handling problems with higher complexity. Although small in size, parametric design processes are time consuming due to their reoccurring nature. Developing synthesis tools for these designs will allow engineers to save time and improve design quality.

Software support for the solution generation phase of the design process did not between academic research and industrial application. The goal is to deliver a generically applicable method and algorithms to develop dedicated synthesis tools for industrial design processes in a standardized manner. Research addresses problem the accessibility and applicability of synthesis technology to both the research community and industrial parties.

We present the Enhanced Anthropometric Rating System (EARS), an automated system for evaluating the quality of 3D human body scans. EARS is able to detect and classify both the geometric and anthropometric features of a given mesh and rates its quality. These features and corresponding operations include the roughness of the scanned surface, the fairness of vertex location, area and position of missing body parts, anthropometrically guided segmentation, detection of landmarks, and wrinkles in clothing. The system ranks these features and operations based on their importance as determined by Anthropologists who have specific requirements with respect to understanding the anthropometry of the soldier of the 21 st century. The data scans contain more than 100,000 vertices and over 300,000 facets. The system is able to provide real-time feedback on whether the mesh is suitable for downstream applications. The system will be used by the U.S. Army to do statistical studies on their large human body dataset.