Teaching axiomatic design to engineers-Theory, applications, and software

A barrier to teaching and using this scientific, axiomatic approach to design has been the difficulty of creating, modifying, managing, and communicating anything beyond relatively simple design hierarchies. Any design with more than a few functional requirements was difficult to manage. Recently introduced design software (Acclaro, email: axiomaticdesign.com) has overcome this barrier. It can easily handle many hundreds of functional requirements and facilitates the application of the independence axiom. The impact on the teaching process is that the students learn to construct large design hierarchies quickly and spend more time on mastering applications.