The authors report their experience in managing a semicustom integrated circuit (IC) assignment for senior honors students at Sheffield City Polytechnic. Although this practice can be traced to Carver Mead in the early 1980s, the wide availability of powerful workstations, CAD, and simulator software has transformed IC design from black magic into a science. The authors make a strong case for the creative use of such CAD and simulator software. The paper concludes with an excellent presentation of a design example: a simple 4-bit microprocessor. This paper will interest students and instructors in the field of IC design.