Intelligent reasoning assistant for incorporating manufacturability issues into the design process

摘要

This paper describes an integrated Intelligent Reasoning Assistant (IRA) as an approach to incorporate manufacturability issues into the design process. By using a series of pre-established geometric features available from a CAD system and manufacturing knowledge captured from experienced design and manufacturing personnel, the proposed model is used to recommend feasible manufacturing process sequences and design changes that enhance design manufacturability early in the conceptual design stage. The used Design For Manufacturing (DFM) approach assumes that incorporating manufacturing issues into the design process is not a serial decision method, rather, it is a process with multiple parallel interactions from origination of a conceptual design to direct linkage with manufacturing parameters. Although the emphasis of this research has been focused on part designs which are metal machining intensive, it is believed that the described approach can be generalized to other manufacturing environments.