Design Nomenclature / Digital Model Making
Generative Design
Also called design exploration, goal-driven design
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
An optimizer proposes geometry against stated goals and constraints — loads, keep-outs, mass, manufacturing method — and returns candidates to choose among. In CAD practice this is topology optimization wrapped in a search over the setup, not a system that invents form. The designer's judgment moves upstream, into stating the problem.
In practice
Vendor marketing that escaped into general use, and it collides with generative art, which shares no method. Say topology optimization when that is what you mean.
Not to be confused with
- Procedural ModelingGenerating geometry from rules — a graph, a script, a grammar — rather than placing it. The output is a function of its inputs, so changing a seed or a count regenerates the whole model. Suits variation and repetition; poor for a one-off form, where writing the rule outlasts modeling the thing.
- Parametric ModelingA model recorded as an ordered sequence of operations bound to editable parameters and to references on earlier geometry. Change a dimension and the tree replays. The power and the fragility are one thing: a reference to a face that a later edit renames or deletes breaks the rebuild.