Recognition of interacting rotational and prismatic machining features from 3-D mill-turn parts

Current feature recognition methods generally recognize and classify machining features into two classes: rotational features and prismatic features. Based on the different characteristics of geometric shapes and machining methods, rotational features and prismatic features are recognized using different methods. Typically, rotational features are recognized using two-dimensional (2-D) edge and profile patterns. Prismatic features are recognized using 3-D geometric characteristics, for example, patterns in solid models such as 3-D face adjacency relationships. However, the current existing feature recognition methods cannot be applied directly to a class of so-called mill-turn parts where interactions between rotational and prismatic features exist. This paper extends the feature recognition domain to include this class of parts with interacting rotational and prismatic features. A new approach, called the machining volume generation method, is developed. The feature volumes are generated by sweeping boun...