In this paper we survey the design and application of HOTFRAME, a frame- work that provides reusable software components in the metaheuristics domain. After a brief introduction and overview we analyze and model metaheuristics with special em- phasis on commonalities and variabilities. The resulting model constitutes the basis for the framework design. The framework architecture defines the collaboration among soft- ware components (in particular with respect to the interface between generic metaheuris- tic components and problem-specific complements). The framework is described with respect to its architecture, included components, implementation, and application.