A natural question is why AI in design? Although the design
applications written about in the journal vary widely, the common thread
is that researchers use AI techniques to implement their ideas. The use of
AI techniques for design applications, at least when AI EDAM was
started, was partially a reaction against the predominant design methods
based on some form of optimization. Knowledge-based techniques,
particularly rule-based systems of various sorts, were very popular. One
of the draws of these methods, I believe, was their ability to represent
knowledge that is hard or awkward to represent in traditional optimization
frameworks. This mirrors my experience: at the time, I was working in
configuration with components that had a large number compatibility and
resource constraints. Although many constraints could be represented in
mixed integer linear programming systems, it was not easy to
conceptualize, write, and most importantly, maintain the constraints in
those systems.