Abstract
The computer aided design is realized today by the significant development of computational tools. These computer codes are often intended for advanced design phase of projects. However, there is to our knowledge very few design support tools in preliminary design phase. Indeed, in the life cycle of a construction project, the design phase is often the place of conflicting situations that prevent the overall optimization of the said projects production costs. During this phase, various technical treatments should be held to verify the feasibility of the works in relation to the structural constraints, neighborhood, implementation, etc... In this work, we propose a formulation of the optimization problem of the overall design of a simple metal structure and a methodology of resolution based on the approach of Genetic Algorithms. The aim is to minimize the overall execution cost.