Towards a better integration of modelers and black box constraint solvers within the product design process

This paper presents a new way of interaction between modelers and solvers to support the Product Development Process (PDP). The proposed approach extends the functionalities and the power of the solvers by taking into account procedural constraints. A procedural constraint requires calling a procedure or a function of the modeler. This procedure performs a series of actions and geometric computations in a certain order. The modeler calls the solver for solving a main problem, the solver calls the modeler’s procedures, and similarly procedures of the modeler can call the solver for solving sub-problems. The features, specificities, advantages and drawbacks of the proposed approach are presented and discussed. Several examples are also provided to illustrate this approach.