CONCURRENT INTELLIGENT RAPID PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENT

Rapid prototyping technology enables rapid production of complex objec ts directly from a computer-aided design model without involving any t ooling or conventional part programming. This has created a new set of problems associated with part design, process planning, support desig n and value engineering analysis of rapid prototyping parts. In this p aper, a methodology for resolving these problems is described, which u ses concurrent engineering, distributed blackboard, value engineering, knowledge-based and feature-based technologies. The functionality, de sign methodology and knowledge representation techniques of a concurre nt intelligent rapid prototyping system for stereolithography form the main focus of this paper.