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Designing mechanical components with features: Representing the form and intent of in-progress designs for automated modification and evaluation
Abstract
A feature-based mechanical design system for thin walled components has been developed and implemented in an experimental computer program. It is a Design-With Features System (DWFS). Features in this system are defined as form plus intent, and are used for entry, modification, and evaluation of the design. To create this system, advances were required in the representations of form and intent, as well as the ability to propagate modifications to the geometry of the design. This research has advanced these three areas, and has coupled them together to create the DWFS. The key results of this research are several new and promising ideas: the basis for more intelligent computer based mechanical design process; an abstract representation of form based on the "virtual boundary" concept which covers a broad domain and is manageable and supports knowledge-based evaluations of the form; a representation of geometric intent which flexibly documents the level of commitment and limits on the design as determined by the designer or other source, such as a manufacturing engineer or automated design evaluation program; a method which automates the incorporation of geometry modifications consistent with intent whether over-, under-, or fully-constrained. Each of these developments can stand alone with separable conclusions, and each opens new avenues of investigation. Together they form the core of this design system. The important characteristics of the DWFS are: composing the form of the component at the configuration level; representing the geometric intent of the design, and thus its level of commitment; automatic, interactive (i.e. fast) propagation of geometry modifications based on intent; supports user-defined features while limiting designers in some other ways; able to support interactive knowledge-based (i.e. feature-based) evaluations of designs (including user-defined feature-forms); and encourages a least commitment design process. These characteristics are all implemented in a manageable, extensible, and computationally efficient way. The DWFS is shown to be a viable candidate as the basis of future CAD/CAE systems. While the DWFS may fit with current design processes, its use is expected to promote a different design process which produces a more manufacturable design more quickly.
Subject Area
Mechanical engineering|Computer science
Recommended Citation
Nielsen, Eric Hilton, "Designing mechanical components with features: Representing the form and intent of in-progress designs for automated modification and evaluation" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9120924.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9120924