Designing inner hood panels through a shape grammar based framework

A framework for a design tool based on shape grammars is presented as an effective means for supporting the early stages of design. The framework uses a shape grammar interpreter to implement parametric shape grammars, allowing the grammar to be used interactively by a designer or optimization routine. A shape grammar to design inner hood panels of vehicles is introduced as an example of a parametric engineering shape grammar, and it is used with the framework to create standard and novel designs made possible by rules that take advantage of shape emergence.