Analysis neutral data structure for GD&T

Abstract

The fundamental issue for automatic geometric tolerance analysis is the representation model, which should, in conjunction with CAD models, accurately and completely represent the GD&T specification according to the GD&T standards. Furthermore, such a representation model should facilitate GD&T validation and tolerance analysis. Most GD&T representation models proposed so far are specific to the tolerance analysis method. Common tolerance analysis methods are min/max chart, Monte Carlo simulation and multivariate regions. This paper will propose a semantic GD&T model, which can be used for any of these methods. The model is a super constraint-tolerance-feature-graph (SCTF-Graph). This paper will demonstrate how the SCTF-Graph model can represent all the tolerance types in the standards, and can contain all the information that is needed for tolerance analysis: nominal geometry (i.e. trimmed features in this research), constraints, tolerances, degrees of freedom (DoFs) to be controlled, assembly hierarchy, and their respective inter-relationships. This paper will discuss the content of the model, how it can be automatically created from the CAD model containing GD&T information (e.g. attributed B-Rep model), and the implementation of such a model, along with some case studies.