Patent ID: 7266482

Claim:
A computer-aided product designing assistant apparatus for assisting designing of an environmentally conscious product by presenting at least one design guideline to be adopted in designing the environmentally conscious product, the apparatus comprising: a database storing a plurality of design guidelines for each product and evaluation values assigned to each design guideline in relation to a plurality of environmental issues and a plurality of phases defining a life cycle of products, and also storing additional evaluation values assigned to each design guideline in relation to an EOL (End Of Life) issue, the evaluation values assigned to each design guideline being capable of indicating an effectiveness of each design guideline in resolving each environmental issue at each phase of the life cycle, each environmental issue respectively representing an issue to be resolved in order to reduce environmental impacts due to each product, the additional evaluation values assigned to each design guideline being capable of indicating an effectiveness of each design guideline in resolving the EOL issue, the EOL issue representing an issue to be accounted at an end of a life of each product for realizing recycle or reuse of at least a part of each product in the life cycle; and a processing unit for determining a relative importance level of each environmental issue at each phase of the life cycle for a product to be designed, selecting at least one design guideline regarded as the best for adopting for the product to be designed from said plurality of design guidelines stored in the database according to the evaluation values stored in the database and the relative importance level of each environmental issue at each phase of the life cycle determined for the product to be designed, and presenting said at least one design guideline selected for the product to be designed.