THE PERFORMANCE OF A MECHANICAL DESIGN COMPILER

A mechanical design ''compiler'' has been developed which, given an ap propriate schematic, specifications, and utility function for a mechan ical design, returns catalog numbers for an optimal implementation. Th e compiler has been successfully tested on a variety of mechanical and hydraulic power transmission designs, and a few temperature sensing d esigns. Times required have been at worst proportional to the logarith m of the number of possible combinations of catalog numbers.