The Novel Virtual Reality Fixture Design and Assembly System (VFDAS)

Abstract

AbstractThe primary objectives and aims of this paper were to develop an interactive VR system entitled Virtual Reality Fixture Design & Assembly System (VFDAS), which would allow fixture designers and assembly engineers to complete the design process for modular fixtures within the virtual environment (VE). This required the identification of what types of VR scenario and interactivity in VFDAS are needed to achieve the functionality in terms of computer aided fixture design (CAFD) and solve the actual problems arising from the fixture design process, such as: fixture location determination and assembly interference check. The VFDAS system would need to comprise the functionality of fixture element selection, fixture layout design, assembly planning, essential analysis and so on. More specifically, it would be useful for VFDAS to be used to select modular fixtures from VR libraries, spatially manipulate each element to assemble on the arbitrary workpiece users supply in preference, detect the assembly collision in advance and implement design optimization and verification etc. Furthermore, the feasibility of using interactive VR technology to facilitate the fixture design and assembly process has to be evaluated. The advantages of VR that could be used to support the conventional fixture design have to be identified.KeywordsVirtual realityfixture designextact collsion detectioninteractive physics simulationVFDAS