Analyzing and Implementing a Feature Mapping Approach to CAD System Interoperability

Interoperable information exchange between computer-aided design (CAD) systems is one of the major problems to enable information integration in a collaborative engineering environment. Although a significant amount of work has been done on the extension and standardization of CAD data formats as well as the cooperation of CAD systems in both academy and industry, these approaches are generally low-level and narrowly targeted. Lack of fundamental study of interoperability and generic solution to this problem is the major issue. Our intention of this research is to design a solution of CAD feature interoperability as generic as possible based on a theoretical foundation of language types. In this paper, we present a fundamental model of semantic features and feature mapping process based on the type theory. We implement and demonstrate our approach for automated feature exchange between commercial CAD systems

An automated method mapping parametric features between computer aided design software

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonEnterprise efficiency is limited by data exchange. A product designer might specify the geometry of a product with a Computer Aided Design program, an engineer might re-use that geometry data to calculate physical properties of the product using a Finite Element Analysis program. These different domains place different requirements on the product representation. Representations of product data required for different tasks is dependent on the vendor software associated with those tasks, sharing data between different vendor programs is limited by incompatibility of the vendor formats used. In the case of Computer Aided Design where the virtual form of an object is modelled, no standard data format captures complete model data. Common data standards transfer model surface geometry without capturing the topological elements from which these geometries are constructed. There are prescriptive data representations to allow these features to be specified in a neutral format, but little incentive for vendors to adopt these schemes. Recent efforts instead focus on identifying similar feature elements between different vendor CAD programs, however this approach relies on onerous manual identification requiring frequent revision. This research develops methods to automate the task of mapping relationships between different data format representations. Two independent matching techniques identify similar CAD feature functions between heterogeneous programs. Text similarity and object geometry matching techniques are combined to match the data formats associated with CAD programs. An efficient search for matching function parameters is performed using a genetic algorithm that incorporates semantic data matching and geometry data matching. A greedy semantic matching algorithm is developed that compares with the Doc2vec short text matching technique over the API dataset tested. A SVD geometric surface registration technique is developed that requires fewer calculations than an equivalent Iterative Closest Point method

Two-Dimensional Selections for Feature-Based Data Exchange

Proper treatment of selections is essential in parametric feature-based design. Data exchange is one of the most important operators in any design paradigm. In this paper we address two-dimensional selections (faces and surfaces) in feature-based data exchange (FBDE). We define the problem formally and present algorithms to address it, in general and in various cases in which feature rewrites are necessary. The general algorithm operates at a geometric level and does not require solving the persistent naming problem, which is required for selection support inside a single CAD system. All algorithms are applicable to the Universal Product Representation (UPR) FBDE architecture, and the general algorithm is also applicable to the STEP parametrics specification.