There's been a growing public interest in algorithms in recent years, and this shift has in some ways created an idea that algorithms are far more complex and advanced than they actually are or need to be. In essence, an algorithm can be thought of as:
A set of instructions that typically help to solve a problem.
A generative design approach involves several steps with distinct types of algorithms that encode logic at each step.
The methods used in each step are very different from each other, so we generally categorize them in the following way:
| Step | Algorithm Type |
|---|---|
| generation of new design studies | generators |
| evaluation of each study | evaluators |
| ranking and solution achieves goal | solvers |