Patent ID: 7840097

Claim:
A design aiding apparatus comprising: a retaining unit to retain plural pieces of shape information in a first form about respective plural registered components which may constitute a structure; a first extracting unit to extract plural pieces of feature information from the plural pieces of shape information in the first form about the plural registered components, respectively, retained in said retaining unit; an obtaining unit to obtain a piece of shape information in a second form about a structural component constituting the structure; a second extracting unit to extract a piece of feature information from the piece of shape information in the second form about the structural component obtained by said obtaining unit; and a retrieving unit to calculate degrees of similarity of each of the plural pieces of feature information about the respective registered components extracted by said first extracting unit to the piece of feature information about the structural component extracted by said second extracting unit, and retrieving a registered component whose calculated degree of similarity is equal to or larger than a predetermined degree as a similar component of the structural component, wherein said first extracting unit and said second extracting unit extract frequency distribution of distances from the shape information as the feature information by extracting arbitrary two points on a shape represented by shape information in the first form or the second form and calculating a distance between the two points a predetermined number of times.