Abstract: The present disclosure relates to a computer-implemented method for performing a design process by processing design data of a physical object. The method includes acquiring a dataset including design data samples of design data, determining at least one design concept including design data samples from the acquired dataset based on at least a similarity of feature values of design features, calculating a local similarity measure between at least two description spaces for each design data sample included in the determined design concept, selecting a number of design data samples based on the calculated local similarity measure as most representative designs and least representative designs, outputting the selected most representative design to an engineering process for further processing or deleting the least representative design from the design data samples of the respective design concept, and processing at least one of the most representative design data samples in the engineering process.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method obtains a dataset including design data samples, each sample representing a design variation of the physical object and including design features, each design feature included in a description space. The method determines concept candidates from the obtained dataset based on at least a feature value similarity of the design features, each concept candidate including a data sample group, for generating concept candidate configurations. The method calculates a metric for said configurations which defines a quality of the generated configurations and evaluates the design features of different description spaces, and evaluates said configurations based on the calculated metric to generate concepts. One or more representative data sample for each concept is determined based on at least one criterion. The determined representative data samples are output. A design process for the physical object based on the output representative data samples for each concept is performed.