ABSTRACT
The ICADS research project started with the narrow objective of increasing the level of automation in CAD systems. What was realized is that the human designer has the potential for making important contributions in a computer-based design environment, and that to exclude the designer by automating the entire design process would be counterproductive. Instead, it was found that the productivity level of the design activity and the quality of the final artifact can be substantially increased by treating the designer as an agent with natural intelligence interacting in a cooperative system among other agents with artificial intelligence.
