HEEDS Software > Product Description > Design Optimization


Given: A set of conflicting targets for mass, cost, manufacturability and performance.

Find: The best parameter values, or design attributes, to satisfy all design criteria.

This is the problem faced daily by engineers, but the standard solution approaches are no longer effective. Increasing competitive pressure is driving more ambitious design goals and shorter design cycles, while increasing design complexity is making these targets more difficult to satisfy. The expensive and time-consuming trial-and-error process is no longer a viable option.

In the HEEDS environment, engineers easily define design parameters, multi-disciplinary design goals, and analysis tools to judge a design’s performance. Then, HEEDS performs many design iterations automatically while searching for those design parameter values that simultaneously meet all targets and criteria. This search uses advanced optimization algorithms and intelligent strategies that are hybrid and adaptive to effectively and efficiently search even the most complicated design spaces. HEEDS can perform hundreds of design iterations in less time than it would take to perform a handful of manual iterations, yielding much better designs in much less time.

HEEDS has three outstanding features that make it the most powerful design exploration and optimization tool available:

SHERPA is a Simultaneous Hybrid Exploration that is Robust, Progressive and Adaptive. This proprietary optimization search algorithm/strategy automatically and adaptively employs several methods at the same time to efficiently and effectively search even the most complex design spaces. Now there is no need to spend days identifying which optimization search method works best for your problem; just use them all!
CIA is a Cooperative Independent Agent search strategy to efficiently solve very complex or expensive design problems. It allows the user to divide and conquer these challenging problems, just as any good engineer would naturally do.
COMPOSE is a proprietary module for COMPonent Optimization within a System Environment, which speeds search by a factor of 10 – 1,000 on many classes of design optimization problems. This unique multi-level strategy makes seemingly intractable problems (e.g., crashworthiness, forming, CFD, etc.) with hundreds of design variables not only feasible, but straightforward.












Design Optimization
Search, Discover, Refine

Design of Experiments
Explore, Screen, Understand

Design Robustness
Perturb, Test, Assure

Process Automation
Capture, Automate, Accelerate


Red Cedar Technology • 4572 S. Hagadorn • Suite 3-A • East Lansing, Michigan USA 48823
Phone: 517.664.1137 • FAX: 517.664.1175 • info@redcedartech.com