An integrated design and planning environment for welding - Part 1: Product modelling

There is extensive literature and industrial evidence that the early stages of product design are particularly important for life-cycle cost control, product quality and manufacturability. The early stages of weld structure d esign are characterised by the gradual generation and addition of informati on to a generally incomplete product model. This process includes the ident ification of component shapes, positions of joints between components and t he selection of joining methods, based on the required functionality and ap plied manufacturing constraints. Aggregate process planning is a methodolog y for evaluating alternative design and processing options at the early des ign stages by applying manufacturing process criteria. This paper discusses the definition and implementation of CAPABLE/Welding, a newly developed ag gregate process planning system for supporting early design assessment of c omplex fabrications. The first part of this paper details the overall struc ture of the aggregate product model implemented in CAPABLE/Welding. An aggr egate product model of a fabrication is defined using object-oriented and f eature-based methods. The use of relevant design rules to generate weld fea tures is discussed in this paper using as an example the design procedure f or a complex fabrication. Methods for abstracting necessary product data fr om STEP files and directly from a proprietary CAD system are also discussed . The second part of this paper discusses how the product model can be used in aggregate process planning. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights r eserved.