Computer Help
The advent of low cost powerful computers has aided complex mathematical simulation of processes, and simulation software is often used by design engineers. Simulations can identify weaknesses in designs and allow engineers to choose better alternatives.
However, engineers still rely on heuristics, intuition, and experience when designing a process. Human creativity is an element in complex designs.
Read more about this topic: Process Design
Famous quotes containing the word computer:
“What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)