Towards Establishing the Design Exemplar as a CAD Query Language

Abstract

AbstractComputer aided design solid models are frequently interrogated by design engineers and other design stakeholders for reasons such as design reuse, standardization, manufacturability analysis, compatibility, feature extraction, or requirement validation. Currently, two approaches are employed in interrogating these solid models: interactive user interrogation and predefined feature recognition. A new interrogation approach is proposed here based upon the design exemplar. Using this new engineering knowledge representation schema, engineers may interactively define queries against their design models incorporating geometric, topologic, semantic, and algebraic entities and relations; specifying both the explicit and implicit desired characteristics. This paper presents the requirements for a CAD query language and positions the design exemplar as an appropriate solution for this problem.