Current economical, ecological and political developments make it necessary to design efficient structures more than ever. Material minimization thereby plays a significant role. This is especially true for aluminium since the material costs are in general higher than for other metals. Hence, it is obvious to investigate the opportunities of optimization methods, when designing aluminium cross sections. In this paper, genetic algorithms are introduced and respective applications to extruded profiles made from aluminium are presented. This is underlined by an example of use.