Abstract
This paper describes the application of object-oriented design concepts in developing a CIM systems layout. An object-oriented platform is used to introduce flexibility in problem representation and solution search. The concepts illustrated include (i) the creation of a visually descriptive problem representation for ease of human-computer interaction, (ii) ease of incorporation of a range of solution search methodologies from local search to global search by the ability to expose the same objects to multiple sources of messages. The object-oriented code is written in Smalltalk-80.