This research addresses the integration of ComputerAided Design and Computer-Aided Process Planning. A prototype system named FREXPP (Feature Recognition and Expert Process Planning system) is presented. This system extracts and orders the form features of a part that is represented by a solid geometrical modeler and automatically selects the manufacturing process for each recognized form feature. Chapter I describes the proposed system and the assumptions made in this research. An introduction to Artifical Intelligence and expert systems is given in Chapter II. Chapter III presents the literature review of theprocess planning systems. The development of FREXPP is described in Chapters IV and V. Chapter IV describes the procedure for feature recognition. Chapter V describes the expert process planni.ng system that is based on the EXPERT system developed at Rutgers University [77]. The conclusion and the suggestion for future study are presented in Chapter VI.Industrial Engineering and Managemen
