Design automation at Norden

Three and a half years ago, we heard about how IBM was using design automation in the design of new computers and started asking the same questions at Norden. One of the early definitions - that design automation was using computers to design computers was quickly rejected. We wanted to use it for designing radars, display systems, and a wide variety of other electronic, mechanical and optical equipment. Any way in which a computer could be used to help design and develop better equipment faster and at lower cost was fair game for investigation. The resulting applications cover the full range of complexity, illustrated in Figure 1, from simple computations to complex man-machine design systems and automatic optimization techniques.