Geometric skeleton computation enabling concurrent product engineering and assembly sequence planning

This paper introduces a novel modelling approach to geometric skeleton computation enabling concurrent product engineering and assembly sequence planning. Current engineering vision has recently moved towards new modelling and management paradigms to maintain competitive edges all along the product lifecycle. Consistent with concurrent engineering and design for X stakes, this recent shift promotes cross-X and knowledge-intensive philosophies in the product development process, principally focused on lifecycle engineering.The main objective of this research is to integrate assembly process engineering information and knowledge in the early phases of the product development process in a top-down and proactive manner, in order to provide a geometric skeleton-based assembly context for designers. The definition of the product and its related assembly sequence requires both the enhancement and the entire understanding of product relationships between the various product components, and its related assembly rationale. As a consequence, this new modelling approach highlights the need to integrate various stakeholders’ viewpoints involved in the beginning of the product lifecycle. In such a context, earlier work has achieved the early generation of an optimal assembly sequence in the product development process, before the product geometry is completely defined. As a result, previous research has made possible to control and bind the product modelling phase through an assembly oriented product structure.The aim of the proposed approach is to compute and define a geometric skeleton model based on product relational information and the early-defined assembly sequence. The proposed approach–called SKeLeton geometry-based Assembly Context Definition (SKL-ACD)–enables the control of the product modelling phase by introducing skeleton entities consistent with product relationships and assembly sequence planning information. A prototype application within a CAD tool has been developed for aiding geometric skeleton computation and generation. Lastly, an industrial case study is introduced to highlight the feasibility and the relevance of the proposed modelling approach.     

How .NET's custom attributes affect design

In its first release of the .NET Framework, Microsoft has provided a defined method for adding declarative information (metadata) to runtime entities in the platform. These entities include classes, methods, properties, and instance or class variables. Using .NET, you can also add declarative information to the assembly, which is a unit of deployment that is conceptually similar to a .dll or .exe file. An assembly includes attributes that describe its identity (name, version, and culture), informational attributes that provide additional product or company information, manifest attributes that describe configuration information, and strong name attributes that describe whether the assembly is signed using public key encryption. The program can retrieve this metadata at runtime to control how the program interacts with services such as serialization and security. We compare design decisions made using custom attributes in .NET with the Java platform.     

Attribute Management System for Engineering Analysis

. This paper presents the design and implementation of an attribute management system that supports the specification of information, past that of the domain definition, needed to qualify an engineering analysis. The information anaged by this system includes various order tensors eeded to specify the analysis attributes of material properties, oads, and boundary conditions as well as additional data constructs used by the analysis such as strings, and references to either other attributes or model entities. The system supports general dependencies and variations of this attribute information as well as its association with the various geometric entities which constitute the geometric domain being analyzed. In addition, since the information is coupled with the model entities themselves, the system can be used to store information needed to control the discretization process of the geometric domain. Since the information can be both spatially and temporally varying, an expression subsystem was also designed into the system. The framework was designed using object-oriented techniques, implemented in C++, and can be easily maintained and extended.     

面向产品属性的用户情感模型

传统情感模型在分析商品评论中的用户情感时面临两个主要问题:1)缺乏针对产品属性的细粒度情感分析;2)自动提取的产品属性其数量须提前确定。针对上述问题,提出了一种细粒度的面向产品属性的用户情感模型(USM)。首先,利用分层狄利克雷过程(HDP)将名词实体聚类形成产品属性并自动获取其数量;然后,结合产品属性中名词实体的权重和评价短语以及情感词典作为先验,利用潜在狄利克雷分布(LDA)对产品属性进行情感分类。实验结果表明,该模型具有较高的情感分类准确率,情感分类平均准确率达87%。该模型与传统的情感模型相比在抽取产品属性和评价短语的情感分类上具有较高的准确率。     

Overview of entity-based integrated design product and process models

The development of computer-integrated systems for engineering design requires models to describe and organize the information and activities involved in design. A product model describes the information created during the design process, and a process model describes the associated design activities. Product and process models can be integrated into a single model. An entity-based approach is one way to carry out this integration. An entity-based integrated model uses product entities and process entities to represent design information and design activities, respectively. The relationships among these entities include organizational, interaction and sequence relationships. Organizational relationships organize entities into hierarchies, interaction relationships characterize the nature of entity interactions, and sequence relationships identify the sequences in which process entities are initiated during the design process. This paper presents an overview of the product and process entities, and the organizational, interaction and sequence relationships of entity-based integrated design product and process models. Formal concepts and notation used to represent these entities and relationships are described using a simple design example. © 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Limited. All rights reserved.     

Fast global and partial reflective symmetry analyses using boundary surfaces of mechanical components

Axisymmetry and planar reflective symmetry properties of mechanical components can be used throughout a product development process to restructure the modeling process of a component, simplify the computation of tool path trajectories, assembly trajectories, etc. To this end, the restructured geometric model of such components must be at least as accurate as the manufacturing processes used to produce them, likewise their symmetry properties must be extracted with the same level of accuracy to preserve the accuracy of their geometric model. The proposed symmetry analysis is performed on a B-Rep CAD model through a divide-and-conquer approach over the boundary of a component with faces as atomic entities. As a result, it is possible to identify rapidly all global symmetry planes and axisymmetry as well as local symmetries. Also, the corresponding algorithm is fast enough to be inserted in CAD/CAM operators as part of interactive modeling processes, it performs at the same level of tolerance than geometric modelers and it is independent of the face and edge parameterizations.     

Development of a semantic product modeling system for initial hull structure in shipbuilding

In the initial stage of ship design, designers represent geometry, arrangement, and dimension of hull structures, which correspond to product model information, with 2D geometric primitives such as points, lines, arcs, and drawing symbols on 2D drawings. However, designers must translate the product model information defined on the 2D drawings more intelligently in the following design stages. Thus, design semantics could be lost and design processes that follow could be delayed because of errors by mistranslating the information. Here, design semantics mean design intents of the designer, that is, functions and structures which the product must have.In this study, a semantic product model data structure of an initial ship hull structure was proposed, and a semantic product modeling system was developed based on the proposed data structure. The proposed data structure can store semantic product model information such as product design results with the use of 2D wire frame geometrical data, part attributes, and design knowledge. Hence, this information can be used to generate a 3D solid model and production material information for CAPP as needed.The applicability of the proposed data structure and the developed system was verified by applying them to the deadweight 300,000 ton of Very Large Crude oil Carrier’s product modeling procedure. The application results showed that the proposed data structure and the developed system can be efficiently used for overall initial ship design environment.     

增强现实环境下的产品装配引导技术

以增强现实环境下引导产品装配为目标,建立了面向增强装配过程的统一 信息模型,管理文字、几何和产品装配特征等可视化引导信息。采用基于标志物的视觉跟踪 技术实现虚拟零件和视频中真实零件的注册定位,通过建立虚拟和真实装配场景的深度图处 理增强装配场景中虚实物体的遮挡关系。利用虚实零件的注册位置把装配引导信息叠加到装 配视频场景中。并开发了演示系统,分析和说明了增强现实环境下引导产品进行装配的过程。     

Assembly features in modeling and planning

In recent years, features have been introduced in modeling and planning for manufacturing of parts. Such features combine geometric and functional information. Here it is shown that the feature concept is also useful in assembly modeling and planning. For modeling and planning of both single parts and assemblies, an integrated object-oriented product model is introduced. For specific assembly-related information, assembly features are used. Handling features contain information for handling components, connection features information on connections between components. A prototype modeling environment has been developed. The product model has been successfully verified within several analyses and planning modules, in particular stability analyses, grip planning, motion planning and assembly sequence planning. Altogether, feature-based product models for assembly can considerably help in both assembly modeling and planning, on the one hand by integrating single-part and assembly modeling, and on the other hand by integrating modeling and planning.     

A computational framework for automating generation of sizing function in assembly meshing via disconnected skeletons

This paper proposes a framework for generating mesh sizing functions for assembly models. Size control is crucial in obtaining a high-quality mesh with a reduced number of elements. The reduction in the number of elements will decrease computation time and memory use during mesh generation and analysis. The framework consists of a background octree lattice for storing the sizing function, a set of source entities for providing sizing information based on geometric information, and an interpolation module for calculating the sizing on the background octree lattice using the source entities. Source entities are generated by performing a detailed systematic study to identify all the geometric factors of an assembly. Disconnected skeletons are extracted and used as tools to measure 3D proximity and 2D proximity, which are two of the geometric factors. The framework facilitates the generation of a variety of meshes with a low computational cost, to meet industry needs. The framework has been tested on many industrial parts, and sizing control on a few typical assemblies has been presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

Modular design to support green life-cycle engineering

The severe competition in the market has driven enterprises to produce a wider variety of products to meet consumers’ needs. However, frequent variation of product specifications causes the assembly and disassembly of components and modules to become more and more complicated. As a result, the issue of product modular design is a problem worthy of concern. In this study, engineering attributes were added to the liaison graph model for the evaluation of part connections. The engineering attributes added, including contact type, combination type, tool type, and accessed direction, serve to offer designers criteria for evaluating the component liaison intensity during the design stage. A grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) is then employed for clustering the components and crossover mechanisms are modified according to the need of modular design. Furthermore, a reasonable green modular design evaluation is conducted using the green material cost analysis. According to the results, adjusted design proposals are suggested and materials that cause less pollution are recommended to replace the components with pollution values higher than those in the module. Finally, the authors use Borland C++ 6.0 to evaluate the system and clustering method. To illustrate the methodology proposed in this study, a table lamp is offered as an example.     

面向对象产品装配模型的研究

对产品装配表达要求、产品设计过程要求进行了深入的探讨，基于产品装配对象的分析，提出了一个面向对象的产品装配模型。设计和实现了装配模型类及类层次结构，对该模型在产品信息的表达和管理，面向对象特性，支持Top-Down设计等方面进行了讨论和分析。该装配模型在软件系统设计中得到了很好的应用。     

A quantitative analysis of parametric CAD model complexity and its relationship to perceived modeling complexity

Digital product data quality and reusability has been proven a critical aspect of the Model-Based Enterprise to enable the efficient design and redesign of products. The extent to which a history-based parametric CAD model can be edited or reused depends on the geometric complexity of the part and the procedure employed to build it. As a prerequisite for defining metrics that can quantify the quality of the modeling process, it is necessary to have CAD datasets that are sorted and ranked according to the complexity of the modeling process. In this paper, we examine the concept of perceived CAD modeling complexity, defined as the degree to which a parametric CAD model is perceived as difficult to create, use, and/or modify by expert CAD designers. We present a novel method to integrate pair-wise comparisons of CAD modeling complexity made by experts into a single metric that can be used as ground truth. Next, we discuss a comprehensive study of quantitative metrics which are derived primarily from the geometric characteristics of the models and the graph structure that represents the parent/child relationships between features. Our results show that the perceived CAD modeling complexity metric derived from experts’ assessment correlates particularly strongly with graph-based metrics. The Spearman coefficients for five of these metrics suggest that they can be effectively used to study the parameters that influence the reusability of models and as a basis to implement effective personalized learning strategies in online CAD training scenarios.     

覆盖件产品CEG集成知识模型及表达

产品集成知识模型是对几何模型，特征模型及其相应建模技术进一步的综合和扩展，是实现产品生命周期内信息综合表达的关键，在分析覆盖件产品对象类层次的基础上，提出了几何特征，规则对象和约束方法的面向对象表达策略，建立了集成构形、工程和几何知识描述的覆盖件产品模型，利用基于STEP标准的EXPRESS语言和KBE开发语言，通过语言联编实现产品特征信息和工艺设计知识的高度集成来支持智能化工艺设计过程。     

The introduction of constraints into a graphics system

Often a computer-aided design system acts merely as a storehouse for a collection of graphical entities. It has no knowledge of how these interrelate or what the purpose is of the design that they represent. The work described is an initial attempt to enable the user of a system interactively to provide information of this type. This is done in terms of constraints upon the geometric entities that are defined, along with these entities themselves, in a user interface language.     

基于符号的装配建模方法研究

在以装配符号的定义实现产品装配设计语义抽象表达的基础上，对产品装配建模过程中装配语义的表达、装配语义与装配约束的转化及维护技术进行研究．提出基于装配符号的约束规则集描述，实现产品装配设计信息的传递，并采用装配符号关系图对产品装配设计语义与约束进行动态维护．通过产品装配信息从抽象到具体、从模糊到精确的转化，实现产品装配设计系统对抽象、模糊、动态关联的产品装配设计信息的表达、传递和维护．     

Mereotopological assembly joint information representation for collaborative product design

In this paper we discuss an ontology-based representation method for differentiating assembly joints in collaborative and intelligent product design. As design becomes increasingly knowledge-intensive, intelligent, and collaborative, the need becomes more critical for computational frameworks that enable product development by effectively supporting the formal representation, capture, retrieval, and reuse of product knowledge. Joints are a key aspect of assembly models that are often ambiguous when model sharing takes place. Although various joints may have similar geometries and topologies, the physical implications of the selected joining processes may vary significantly. It is possible to attach notes and annotations to geometric entities in order to distinguish joints; however, such textual information does not readily prepare the model for downstream activities, such as simulation and analysis. As an illustration, analysts must read and interpret the annotations in order to develop the appropriate boundary conditions. In this work, we present an assembly design ontology that explicitly represents assembly constraints, including joining constraints, and infers any remaining implicit ones. By relating concepts through ontology technology rather than just defining data syntax, assembly and joining concepts can be captured in their entirety or extended as necessary. By using the knowledge captured by the ontology, similar looking joints can be differentiated. For this research, we used a mereotopology, which is a region-based theory for parts, and the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) to represent the difference of joints and to define assembly design terms and their relationships. We also used SWRL so that the joining rules can be reasoned to differentiate assembly joints. Finally, by using an ontology, various geometrically and topologically similar joints are successfully differentiated in a standard and machine-interpretable manner.     

Multi-level assembly model for top-down design of mechanical products

To enable next generation CAD tools to effectively support top-down design of products, a top-down assembly design process is refined from the traditional product design process to better exhibit the recursive-execution and structure-evolvement characteristics of product design. Based on the top-down assembly design process, a multi-level assembly model is put forward to capture the abstract information, skeleton information and detailed information involved. The multi-level assembly model is a meta-level implementation and is easy to be extended. Moreover, the inheritance mechanisms are explored to ensure the feasibility of information transferring and conversion between different design phases in the top-down assembly design process. A top-down assembly design sample is analyzed at length to show the application effects of the multi-level assembly model and the relevant inheritance mechanisms. In addition, a practical topic about the model adaptation of existing CAD systems is also discussed for a broader application of the top-down assembly design. Finally, the conclusion of the work and the future directions for further exploration are given.     

Identifying the task variables that predict object assembly difficulty

OBJECTIVE: We investigated the physical attributes of an object that influence the difficulty of its assembly. Identifying attributes that contribute to assembly difficulty will provide a method for predicting assembly complexity. BACKGROUND: Despite object assembly being a widespread task, there has been insufficient research into information processing and cognition during assembly. The lack of research means that the variables that affect the performance of procedural assembly tasks with illustration-only instructions are unknown. METHOD: In Experiment 1, seven physical characteristics (task variables) of assembly objects were systematically varied in a balanced fractional factorial and orthogonal design to create 16 abstract assemblies, which were assembled by 12 participants (6 men and 6 women aged 18-56). A second experiment (20 participants, 8 men and 12 women aged 18 to 52) involved scaled-down models of 8 real-world assemblies. RESULTS: A clear relationship between the task variables and assembly difficulty was found in both studies, and the regression model from the first experiment was able to predict the assembly difficulty timings in Experiment 2. CONCLUSION: The proposed task variables are associated with assembly difficulty, and the regression analysis has shown four of the task variables to be significant predictors of difficulty. APPLICATION: Applications of this research include the use of the regression model as a tool to evaluate the difficulty of assemblies or assembly steps defined by instructions. The task variables can also be used to produce guidelines to ensure that assemblies or assembly steps are manageable.     

Modular product platform configuration and co-planning of assembly lines using assembly and disassembly

Formation of products platforms is carried out during the planning stage and very often separately from the planning of corresponding assembly lines. There is a dearth of literature which considers the different aspects of fully integrating platform design, product family formation, assembly line design, delayed product differentiation, and new concepts of mass customization. A Modular Product Platform Configuration model which uses assembly and disassembly for configuring product variants and Co-Planning of products platforms (MPCC) and their assembly Lines is presented. It is used to co-plan the common platform components and the associated product families simultaneously with the planning of its corresponding mixed-model assembly line. Using both assembly and disassembly to customize the product family platform in order to generate product variants is not commonly discussed in literature. It is defined as the formation of platforms for use to derive multiple products by including many components not shared by every product. The platform is then customized by assembling or disassembling components to form different product variants. The model is formulated using mixed integer mathematical programming to minimize the number of assembly stations and cycle time. Two case studies are used for verification and demonstration. They illustrated the ability of the MPCC model to integrate the planning of product platform, product families and the number of assembly stations required to assemble and disassemble components from mass-assembled product platforms to derive new product variants.