The design and synthesis of thermally coupled distillation flowsheets for separations of five-component mixtures are studied. Four types of possible configurations are identified when simple and complex columns are both considered in a flowsheet. A universal design procedure is developed for design of any types of the identified configurations based on the abstraction of the three basic units in the flowsheets. Two examples demonstrated that this shortcut design method can be used in design of any types of the identified multicomponent thermally coupled distillation flowsheets, as well as give very good initializations for rigorous simulation of such configurations, Moreover, with a proposed computer representation of all the types of the feasible configurations, a synthesis algorithm is developed for synthesizing of multicomponent complex distillation flowsheets with both simple and complex columns. It is practical by the proposed methods for optimal design of multicomponent distillation systems in an extended search space to include the complex distillation flowsheets for industrial problems.