Geometric algorithms for containment analysis of rotational parts

Abstract This paper describes a system and underlying algorithms to perform geometric containment analysis to determine if a newly designed rotational part can be manufactured from a part in an existing database of rotational parts. Only material removal of the database part is considered in order to obtain the newly designed part from the database part. The system uses a three-step algorithm to test for containment. The first step analyzes feasibility of containment using bounding cylinders. If the bounding cylinder of the query part is bigger than the part in the database, then the database part cannot contain the query part and it is eliminated from consideration. The second step analyzes feasibility of containment by ignoring off-axis features. Any part that fails to satisfy containment at this stage is eliminated from consideration. The third step analyzes the remaining parts from the database for feasibility of containment by including the off-axis features. Finally, the system rank-orders all the database parts that can contain the query part based on their volume differences with the query part. The system described in this paper can be used by designers and process planners to find an existing part that can be used as a stock to manufacture a newly designed part. This capability is expected to significantly reduce proliferation of parts, to improve manufacturing responsiveness, and to reduce the cost of new products.

[1]  Satyandra K. Gupta,et al.  A Survey of Shape Similarity Assessment Algorithms for Product Design and Manufacturing Applications , 2003, J. Comput. Inf. Sci. Eng..

[2]  Ali Shokoufandeh,et al.  Solid Model Databases: Techniques and Empirical Results , 2001, J. Comput. Inf. Sci. Eng..

[3]  Andrew Kusiak,et al.  Grouping parts with a neural network , 1994 .

[4]  Donald M. Anderson,et al.  Agile product development for mass customization , 1997 .

[5]  Michael M. Marefat,et al.  Retrieval of similarly shaped parts from a CAD database , 1998, SMC'98 Conference Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat. No.98CH36218).

[6]  Debasish Dutta,et al.  Finding the maximum turnable state for mill/turn parts , 1997, Comput. Aided Des..

[7]  Debasish Dutta,et al.  Feature Based Shape Similarity Measurement for Retrieval of Mechanical Parts , 2001, J. Comput. Inf. Sci. Eng..

[8]  William C. Regli,et al.  Machining feature-based comparisons of mechanical parts , 2001, Proceedings International Conference on Shape Modeling and Applications.

[9]  Nallan C. Suresh,et al.  A neural network system for shape-based classification and coding of rotational parts , 1991 .

[10]  Dana S. Nau,et al.  Feature-based similarity assessment of solid models , 1997, SMA '97.