An architecture for the vertical integration of tooling considerations from design to process planning

To meet the competitive demands of modern manufacturing, it is necessary to reduce design times and enrich decision making by integrating process plan ning into the design activity using Concurrent Engineering principles. Alth ough this is traditionally done through the interaction between designers a nd process planners, it is perhaps more desirable for a CAD system to have the functionality necessary to automatically advise the designer of the sho p floor implications of design decisions. Cutting tool selection is an esse ntial thread linking feature-based design of machined parts to process plan ning. Thus, the implementation of tooling considerations into design is an important requirement for an integrated CAD/CAPP system. This paper defines an architecture to enable the vertical integration of tooling consideratio ns from early design to process planning and scheduling. The architecture i s based on a five-level tool selection procedure which is mapped to a time- phased aggregate, management and detailed process planning framework. This paper draws on literature and the results of an industrial survey to identi fy the tooling methods suitable for integration within a CAD system and cat egorises them into the five levels of tool selection. The functions are the n placed on a time-dependent framework that covers the progression of a pro duct from design to process planning. The new functionality is being implem ented as an object-oriented application called VITool, which is being devel oped so that it can be fully integrated within an existing CAD system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.