1 Proceedings of CAD’16, Vancouver, Canada, June 27-30, 2016, 1-4 © 2016 CAD Solutions, LLC, http://www.cad-conference.net Title: Generative Computer-Aided Design: New Design Tool for Direct Physical Production Authors: Lujie Chen, chenlujie@sutd.edu.sg, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore Lawrence Sass, lsass@mit.edu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Keywords: Generative CAD, Rapid prototyping, Contouring, Plate forming, Direct physical production DOI: 10.14733/cadconfP.2016.1-4 Introduction: Computer-Aided Design has come a long way since the advent of computer technology. Design, a human-centered cognitive activity, has been facilitated, advanced, and even partly replaced by computers through the development of sophisticated numerical algorithms. Computer technology that enables design is a consequence of observation and extraction of repeated, replicable work embedded a design process. In early days, such replicable work pertained to drafting, printing and error checking. Now, deeper observation of the design process has motivated engineers to create computer- based design tools that are able to accomplish highly complicated work without human intervention. The trend of offloading replicable work from designers to computers leads to Generative CAD, an approach that will have considerable impact in design and manufacturing fields. Today, heavy industries such as civil construction and ship building usually have their design and manufacturing processes implemented in four phases (e.g. [1,2]) (Fig. 1). Fig. 1: Typical four design phases of heavy industries. The first phase is called basic or concept design, in which aesthetics and basic functions of a product are defined in digital models. Quantification of size, weight, material, etc. of the product is loosely addressed with little detail. Companies involved in the concept design are architecture firms and design studios. The second phase is initial design, where the conventional engineering design is involved. Questions related to number of rooms in a building, maximum load of a ship, etc. are addressed, and major dimensions, weight and material of the product are quantified. Companies involved in the initial design are construction firms and ship design companies who have specific domain knowledge of the industry. The third phase is detail design, in which all parts of the production are modelled in detail. Typically, lots of engineers are required in the work using conventional CAD tools to do drafting, measurement, calculation and error checking. Companies involved are still construction firms and ship design companies; or sub-contractors of these firms. The