Abstract: A computer-implemented method is proposed in a computer-assisted design (CAD) system. In one embodiment, the method obtains gradients of an objective with respect to CAD parameters of a shape in a coordinate space, where the shape is obtained from the CAD parameters. The obtained gradients may then be used to modify the CAD parameters by applying a gradient descent algorithm aimed to maximise or minimise the objective. The present invention thus proposes a differentiable parametric CAD system comprising an artificial neural network, and which can be applied on top of any CAD software tool.