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One of the key requirements for future manufacturing system is to cope with changes and uncertainties quickly and cost-efficiently. Reconfigurable machines are appropriate choices to meet this requirement. The application of a reconfigurable machine involves frequent reconfigurations to respond to task changes. Reconfiguration needs an efficient tool to compare a large number of design candidates in terms of the specified design requirements. Little effort has been found in developing this type of tools. In this paper, we report our works in the following aspects: (i) an overview and summary of existing works in this area, (ii) some observations of the design features of reconfigurable systems, (iii) the definition of the requirements of the integrated design environment, and (iv) an example of developing the integrated environment for reconfigurable tripod-based machines