Design Space Exploration Framework - A modular approach to flexibly explore large sets of design variants of parametric models within a single environment

Parametric modelling allows to relatively easily generate large sets of design variants (so called design space). Typically, a designer intuitively moves through this design space, resulting in one or several satisfying solutions. Due to the theoretically large number of variants that can be created with parametric models, obviously, there is a high probability that potentially good solutions could be missed, which is not at least because of human cognitive limitations. Consequently, it is necessary to develop a certain strategy to support designers in order to search for design solutions. Even though, various methods to systematically approach large data sets exist, the application of them in the design process is a special case, firstly, due to the existence of many non-specifiable and subjective dimensions (e.g. aesthetics) and secondly because of the multiple ways how designers actually search for solutions. This demands for a more flexible approach to design space exploration. This paper investigates how different methods can be combined to support the exploration of design spaces. Therefore, a conceptual framework with a modular architecture is proposed and its prototypical implementation is demonstrated.