Abstract
Sharing product design information with other downstream applications, such as process planning, is a major barrier to develop an integrated manufacturing system. Part of this shortcoming is due to the difference in product data descriptions, since a design is geometry based, whereas process planning is manufacturing feature based. The implementation of automatic feature recognition (AFR) techniques is considered an indispensable concept for transferring product data between computer-aided design (CAD) and automatic computer-aided process planning (ACAPP). This is accomplished using one of the international Product Data Exchange (PDE) standards, such as DXF, IGES, or STEP files. Despite different AFR techniques and systems having been developed to serve this aim, each of them has limitations. The most important limitation is that each system is restricted to a specific set of predefined manufacturing features. This means that even when the system tries to cover as many as possible of the existing features that are predefined, it is always possible to create a new feature based on the specific requirements and designer creativity. Consequently, the new feature is not included in the compiled database and, hence, will not be recognised. This paper presents a novel and smart interactive AFR (SI-AFR) methodology for recognising the features of rotational parts, taking a STEP AP203, AP214, or AP242 file as an input to the system. This has been written using C# coding to extract the features’ geometrical and topological information from a STEP file, building a database containing a set of 54 predefined features, whilst also smartly learning how to recognise new features and adding them to the set. Several examples have been processed for this paper to validate the system, and based on the results, it is anticipated that it will lead to the launching of a new generation of feature recognition systems.
Highlights
Due to the continuous changes in customers’ needs and the increase in global market competition, manufacturing companies aim to launch their products with the required quality, minimal time-to-market, and lower cost [1]
A part computer-aided design (CAD) representation is saved and exported using one of the international Product Data Exchange (PDE) standards to facilitate the interface between different CAD/computer-aided process planning (CAPP)/CAM systems
Whilst different PDE standards have been implemented in different automatic feature recognition (AFR) systems, special attention has been paid to the STEP file, which includes advantages that outweigh those of any other format
Summary
Due to the continuous changes in customers’ needs and the increase in global market competition, manufacturing companies aim to launch their products with the required quality, minimal time-to-market, and lower cost [1]. In all AFR techniques, the relations between low-level geometric entities, such as points, lines, and curves created in CAD systems, are automatically extracted and converted to high-level manufacturing features, for example, holes, grooves, and pockets [5, 6] For this purpose, a part CAD representation is saved and exported using one of the international Product Data Exchange (PDE) standards to facilitate the interface between different CAD/CAPP/CAM systems. The fourth module comprises an analysis of the part’s geometrical and topological information by matching it with the predefined features in order to achieve feature recognition Whilst these four steps can be found in many AFR systems, they have different abilities regarding the number and types of features they can recognise. If the SI-AFR system is used for the first time and a new feature is found, the total number of the predefined features will be 55 instead of the 54 that are already defined
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