Feature-based design: Four hypotheses for future CAD systems

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Features are meaningful abstractions of geometry that engineers use to reason about components, products, and processes. For design activity, features are design primitives, serve as the basis for product representations, and can incorporate information relevant to life-cycle activities such as manufacturing. Research on feature-based design has matured to the point that results are being incorporated into commercial CAD systems. The intent of this paper is to look forward. Hence, this paper does not play the role of a standard survey, which necessarily only reviews the past. Nevertheless, an appropriate historical context is provided as a basis for these particular futuristic projections. Applications of feature-based design and technologies of feature representations are reviewed, then open research issues are identified and put in the context of past and current work. Features are prominent as catalysts for computer-based design tools, but the vision presented expands upon this basis, delving beyond features. For that future design environment, four hypotheses are proposed as research challenges: two on the existence of fundamental subfeature elements and relationships for features, one that presents a new definition of design features, and one that argues for the successful development of concurrent engineering languages. Evidence for these hypotheses is provided from recent research results and from speculation about the future of feature-based design.