Patent ID: 6336107
Filing Date: 2002-01-01
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A method for automatically arranging a plurality of particular electric parts of an electric device at an optimum arrangement on a printed circuit board,by using a plurality of past examples respectively indicating a past arrangement of a set of electric parts of the electric device, each past example of electric parts being composed of position information indicating positions of the set of electric parts and attribute information indicating attributes of the set of electric parts, also by using information indicative of a potential function including one or more parameters for indicating a potential energy of each electric part of the set of electric parts, the plurality of past examples and the information indicative of the potential function being stored in a storing unit, the method comprising the steps of: selecting a plurality of particular past examples corresponding to the plurality of particular electric parts from the past examples stored in the storing unit; automatically determining values of the one or more parameters of the potential function according to the particular past examples for each particular electric part; differentiating each of the potential functions to obtain a force exerted on each particular electric part to be arranged on the printed circuit board; changing, under calculation, a position of each particular electric part to be arranged on the printed circuit board according to the force so as to decrease a total potential energy obtained by summing up the potential energies of the particular electric parts, each potential energy of one particular electric part being obtained by determining a position of the particular electric part in one potential function; determining a particular arrangement of the particular electric parts placed at the changed positions as the optimum arrangement; and outputting information indicating the determined optimum arrangement through an outputting device.