Although never explicitly acknowledged as a primary source, there is a correlation between the ideas of Sitte and the planning toolkit of By Design. While Sitte filtered the natural planning and design approach of Vitruvius and Alberti, Sitte's notion that urban planning is an art--that we should strive to create 'places' connected by a hierarchy of traditional squares and streets for the pleasure of people--has been accepted as 'natural' commonsense in By Design.
Cavanagh and I talked at a conference being held by Engineous Software, which produces a software product called iSight, which is used by design engineers to automate simulated tests of various types so that more tests c an be run than is practical when these are manually executed.
The use of the same solid-model database by design and manufacturing allows important decisions affecting the manufacturing of a product to be made earlier in its development cycle.