Feature based computer aided process planning

Abstract

This research attempts to study, plan and develop an integrated feature based CAPP system that generates automated process plans for machining prismatic components. The CAPP system comprises a STEP compliant feature based commercial CAD system and the Smalltalk object oriented system. A library of features has been developed that is based on STEP based form feature taxonomy but modified to communicate the manufacturing intent and feature aggregation. The CAPP system has been developed to represent the product, process and resource domain knowledge with a number of object hierarchies, communication methods, and the user interface that would suit the concurrent engineering needs. In addition, suitable geometric and process reasoning methods have been developed in the CAPP system that use the feature based component design data to generate automated process plans. The research also attempts to identify the problems in feature based process planning and discusses the possible solutions. A solution to the side feature interaction problem has been implemented in the CAPP system. The CAPP system test results have demonstrated that the proposed approach has been successful and has a great potential for further improvements in terms of flexibility, modularity, emerging data exchange standards, and case in customising the CAPP system