AUTOMATED SOFTWARE SYNTHESIS - AN APPLICATION IN MECHANICAL CAD

Automated program synthesis has not gained widespread acceptance among software practitioners despite considerable efforts by several resear chers. We outline some of the difficulties in applying program synthes is for practical problems and argue that a careful analysis of the cos t vs. benefit tradeoff is essential when considering such an approach. We describe a successful application of automated program generation for synthesizing geometric constraint satisfaction routines in the dom ain of mechanical CAD. We present a general framework for modeling and solving the problem, illustrate the framework using examples from the geometric constraint satisfaction domain, and describe experimental r esults on productivity increase using this approach. We also discuss c haracteristics of the problem domain and our approach that were critic al for success.