ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies four levels of design complexity. In order of increasing complexity, they are the component level, the product level, the system level, and the community level. The chapter shows that system-level and community-level design projects have essentially identical design procedures and engineering aspects, and that component-level and product-level designs are quite similar to each other. The system designer must have broad knowledge relative to the availability of components likely to be used as well as of their input and output characteristics, and also of the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives. An extensive, up-to-date design file is an important source of information, not only for the system designer but for the members of the design team. The program planning and project planning phases generally refer to community-level systems. These often involve political, legal, geographic, and demographic considerations much more than engineering principles.
