We have observed that many designers use spreadsheet programs for preliminary parametric design calculations. The primary reason for this appears to be the flexibility and ease of use of spreadsheets as compared to more advanced analysis tools. However, current commercially available spreadsheets were originally designed for finance and accounting and do not naturally support the analytical techniques used in design and engineering. In this paper, we propose a fundamentally different kind of spreadsheet for use in preliminary parametric design. We describe the features of this spreadsheet that make it especially suitable for preliminary parametric design, discuss the theoretical basis for implementing it and present the results of preliminary user tests.

Issue Section:
Research Papers
Topics:
Accounting, Design, Parametric design
1.
Dobson, W. G., and Wolff, A. K., 1984, Engineering Problem Solving With Spreadsheet Programs, American Society for Metals.
2.
Gleicher, M., and Witkin, A., “Differential Manipulation,” Graphics Interface ’91, June 1991.
3.
Gonda, M., Fertig, K. W., and Teeter, R. J., “Aerospace Conceptual Design Using An Intelligent Design and Analysis Environment: Design Sheet,” AIAA 1992 Aircraft Design Systems Meeting, 1992.
4.
Kral, I. H., The Excel Spreadsheet for Engineers and Scientists, Prentice Hall, 1992.
5.
Lai, K-L., Malone, T., and Yu, K-C., “Object Lens: A Spreadsheet for Cooperative Work,” ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 1988.
6.
Light, R. A., “Symbolic Dimensioning in Computer-Aided Design,” Master’s thesis, M.I.T., 1980.
7.
McClave, J. T., and Dietrich, F. H., Statistics, Dellen Publishing Company, 1985.
8.
Milley, M. K., “An Interactive Computer Aid for Design Parameter and Constraint Tradeoff Analysis.” Master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1972.
9.
Papalambros, P. Y., and Wilde, D. J., Principles of Optimal Design: Modeling and Computation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1988.
10.
Piela, P. C., “ASCEND: An Object Oriented Computer Environment for Modeling and Analysis,” PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, 1989.
11.
Ramaswamy, R., Ulrich, K. T., Kishi, N., and Tomikashi, M., “Solving Parametric Design Problems Requiring Configuration Choices,” ASME JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL DESIGN, Vol. 115, No. 1, 1993.
12.
Ramaswamy, R., “Computer Tools for Preliminary Parametric Design,” PhD Thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, June 1993.
13.
Serrano, D., “Constraint Management in Conceptual Design,” PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 1987.
14.
Slocum, A. H., Precision Machine Design, Prentice Hall, 1992.
15.
Strang, G., Linear Algebra and Its Applications, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988.
16.
Tidd, W. F., Rinderle, J. R., and Witkin, A., “Design Refinement via Interactive Manipulation of Design Parameters and Behaviors,” Proceedings of the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference, 1992.
17.
Witkin, A., Gleicher, M., and Welch, W., “Interactive Dynamics,” Computer Graphics, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 11–21, March 1990, Proceedings 1990 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
This content is only available via PDF.
Copyright © 1997
 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
You do not currently have access to this content.