1. A casting design system ( 101 ), comprising: a database ( 115 ) which contains casting design data and rules pertaining to alloy properties, casting processes, geometrics, mined data and design rules; a user interface ( 109 ), in communication with said database ( 115 ), which accepts as input a product design ( 103 ) that is to be cast by a casting process; an inference engine ( 111 ) which is adapted to generate casting designs ( 114 ) from the input product design ( 103 ) by searching the database ( 115 ) and retrieving data therefrom, and by considering the influence of a casting method on a casting solution; and a process simulation module ( 110 ) which performs process simulations on casting designs ( 114 ) generated by the inference engine ( 111 ).