Hi
Is there any way to apply a design to an asset and have it cascade to it's children?
Designs always cascade to the children. That is what the HIPO job is doing when you commit.
There's cascading, and then there is cascading though 
Designs are applied differently than permissions, in that designs are inherited from an asset's parent, where as permissions are applied to individual assets by default.
blaueengel: if you're asking if there is a "manually cascade" option on designs, no there isn't, but you should be able to use the "override" functionality to get the same result.
Not in the database they're not -- designs are manually cascaded just like permissions. That's what the Update Lookups HIPO does and why changing a design across an entire site takes so long.
Yep, but that's not how they are applied conceptually. The fact that they are cascaded is purely related to the technical implementation (AFAIK).
To clear this up, designs are cascaded just like permissions (and stop cascading on a conflict like permission do) but there is no option to not cascade. Instead of the option to not cascade a change, you get the override option. We do this because you can only have one design per asset whereas you can have many permissions per asset.
My aplogies I should have been clearer about what I want to achieve (it was late )
I have an existing asset with a number of children that have an existing design applied to them. I want to have a different design that is applied to the children, and another the original which applies to the parent. I'm hoping I can change the design on all of them by having it cascade, them apply an exception to the parent.
Yes, apply the design to the parent asset (which will apply to all its children), then apply the alternate design to the parent as an "override" (which will only apply to the parent).