Extracting the manufacturing information of machining features for computer-aided process planning systems

Abstract

An integrated manufacturing system needs automated conversion of design information into its manufacturing counterpart. This is partly dealt with in the present study for extracting the manufacturing information for computer-aided process planning systems, including the identification of tool approach direction, attributing the dimensional and geometric tolerances to the machining features, and identification of the reference faces. In spite of extensive study conducted on computer-aided process planning systems, further investigation is still needed to develop automation in attributing tolerances to machining features and identifying the reference faces. The authors have proposed new methods to implement these tasks. A detailed case study has been used to illustrate the application of the developed algorithms.