Engineering as Code: Bringing Software Engineering Methodology to Engineering Design
Large language models have made significant progress in verifiable domains such as code generation and chip design, yet remain limited on engineering design tasks in fields like architecture, mechanical engineering, and HVAC. This paper argues the root cause is not model capability but the absence of a "Design as Code" computable foundation: design representations that can be consumed, verified, and versioned by machines. Existing CAD/BIM systems couple design logic with geometry, causing quality assurance to drift downstream; Automated Compliance Checking (ACC) suffers from geometric false positives and naming-dependent model reconstruction overhead. We propose the Engineering as Code (EaC) paradigm: expressing engineering design as text-native declarative language with automated rule engines, version control, and package management as quality gates. Core contributions: (1) the Information Representation Hypothesis, arguing the engineering AI bottleneck stems from missing computable design representations rather than model capability; (2) ADL (Assembly Definition Language) with Part as atom, organized into three orthogonal sub-languages -- PDL (Part Definition), PML (Part Mating), and PLL (Part Layout); (3) ESA (Engineering Static Analysis), shifting compliance checking from downstream review to design-time, operating on semantic categories (Family types, Mate relations) rather than geometry, eliminating false positives and naming dependencies. A prototype validates ADL expressiveness and ESA detection across three cross-domain samples (telecom rack expansion, modular datacenter, mechanical keyboard), checking 69 rules in under 200ms. A controlled violation injection experiment achieves 100% detection rate with zero false positives. The SD-HWE-Bench benchmark design is complete as an empirical testbed for the hypothesis.