An object-oriented hierarchical case representation of automotive panels in a computer-aided process planning system

Case-based reasoning (CBR) has a promising application prospect in computer-aided process planning (CAPP) for automotive panels. How to effectively represent and organize the abundant information in the cases has a crucial impact on the effectiveness of case retrieval and adaptation. This paper presents an object-oriented hierarchical case representation scheme for automotive panels in process planning. The scheme is based on an extended object model and case object model which are extensions of the object model in object-oriented modelling technology. Information in cases is divided into three kinds and each kind is represented by different kinds of classes. Accordingly the representation scheme has four layers and different kinds of classes have different functionalities. A car fender case is presented as an example.