Sharing and adjustment of design targets in a distributed CAD system

Describes a system for distributed design in which multiple designers work together. This system is composed of software agents, each of which is assigned to a designer. In the first stage of design using the system, the software agents communicate each other instead of the designers to divide design targets (e.g., the target value of manufacturing cost) into sub-targets, each of which is allocated to a designer. Each of the designers performs his/her task, considering the allocated sub-targets. If it is found that a sub-target cannot be achieved in doing the task, the sub-targets are adjusted through the communication among the software agents.