Intuitive analogue circuit design

This paper is concerned with ideas and methods for a teaching approach that has been developed to provide insight into and aid creativity in the process of analogue circuit design. This approach is modelled on the way the authors see circuit designers acting as cognitive agents, namely qualitatively, intuitively, abstractly and in a knowledge rich and formalism poor fashion. This can be contrasted with the formal mathematical approach, the tool employed by designers once an understanding has been reached of the design problem at hand. Although formal modelling approaches have been well researched, modelling the initial design process can throw light upon and maybe tackle the problem of the lack of an analogue design formalism of the kind seen in digital circuit design. The authors feel that there is a cognitive process at the initial stages of analogue design not present in the digital design process that must be tackled. The paper presents a formalisation of some techniques used by designers to help deal with the manipulation of complex relationships in analogue circuit design. These formalisms can be viewed as giving cognitive support to the designer to enhance creativity