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In the last decade, the value of freehand drawing as a design tool in both education and practice is open to debate as a result of the accessibility of digitised drawing tools such as CAD systems and the relative ease with which a design can be presented and realised using computerised techniques such as parametric modelling and rapid prototyping. The conceptual design stage is the most critical in the design process. Despite the fact that most of the widespread computer aided design systems (such as AutoCAD and 3DSMax) are primarily directed towards the more detailed stage of design process. Even so, there are architects today who have abandoned the use of a pencil and paper, turning to the computer during the creation of their design concepts. The paper investigates the limitations of Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) systems which make them unable to satisfy what freehand drawings are doing for the initial design phase. To achieve this aim, the first section of this paper puts forward a framework for the main roles of freehand drawings through the conceptual design process. The second section investigates the capabilities of computer aided drawing tools to achieve these roles by depending on the theory and practice of the use of CAD tools at the initial design stage. The third section concludes the weakness and strength of computer aided drawing systems in the conceptual design phase. The paper ends with recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, new design methods have emerged in architectural domain depending on the computer as a design tool. The ill-defined nature of architectural problem and the designer subjective preferences have required the use of objective methods of knowledge analysis such as exploration. Previous studies on design computing have described exploration in relation to varied design operations; the most important of them are the search and evaluation processes. The paper puts forward a theoretical framework for exploration in design computing which is able to differentiate the use of exploration among various computational tools. It defines the aims of exploration, the roles of exploration in a design process, the sequence of exploration activities in a design process, and the executor of exploration. The roles of exploration include searching both the design problem space and design solution space; whereas in the latter, exploration is a tool of generating and evaluating design alternatives. The framework is used to identify the tasks of exploration in some design computing tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]