A simple visualization tool to support concurrent engineering design

Abstract

Due to the nature of the die casting process, the part geometry restricts the die design significantly and hence affects the quality of the part. However, as is often the case in other manufacturing processes, the manufacturability of die castings is not considered until the design has been nearly completed and detailed. Primarily, this is due to the limited capability of current Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) tools to support design evaluation, especially during preliminary design. In this paper, we present a new volume-based geometric reasoning and visualization approach to support this task. This system is very efficient in terms of computation time and can evaluate the whole range of designs regardless of their shape complexity. In addition, it is very simple-to-use and the results are self-evident. The current focus is on thermal- and flow-related problems in die casting. Our approach, however, is general and can be applied to other manufacturing processes.