"Design Agents" for the car design process
Car design takes months of iteration between stylists, CAD engineers, and aerodynamicists. This work introduces a multi-agent framework that compresses that loop: vision-language and large language model agents collaborate to take a concept from a hand-drawn sketch through photorealistic rendering, 3D CAD modeling, meshing, and CFD simulation — automatically.
Specialist agents, one design loop
Styling agents
VLM-driven agents interpret hand-drawn sketches and generate photorealistic concept renderings, keeping aesthetic intent in the loop.
Geometry agents
LLM agents translate concepts into parametric CAD, leveraging the DrivAerNet design space for manufacturable 3D geometry.
Simulation agents
Automated meshing and CFD evaluation close the loop, scoring every candidate on aerodynamic performance.
Aesthetics and aerodynamics, jointly optimized
By coupling generative styling with physics evaluation, the framework explores designs that look good and fly through air well — a step toward AI co-designers that handle the tedious handoffs between creative and engineering tools.
Citation
@proceedings{elrefaie2025designagents,
author = {Elrefaie, Mohamed and Qian, Janet and Wu, Raina and Chen, Qian
and Dai, Angela and Ahmed, Faez},
title = {AI Agents in Engineering Design: A Multi-Agent Framework for
Aesthetic and Aerodynamic Car Design},
series = {IDETC-CIE},
pages = {V03BT03A048},
year = {2025}
}