US Patent 7751917 Optimisation of the design of a component

A method of optimising the design of a component is provided, in which a set of principal design variants is generated, the variants having design parameters which are common to all design variants of the set and some which differ between variants. Subsets of secondary design variants are generated by a computer executed rule based geometry engine, the subsets comprising at least one secondary design variant, generated by modifying at least one design parameter or design variable of the principal design variant.