Research on Digital Models for Product Design and Manufacture

CAD/CAM integrate technology has been drawn to much a ttention and becomes one of the focus of the international academic and commerci al research, Through efforts nearly 10 years, remarkable progress has been made in the 3-dimension feature parametric modeling. UG, SOLIDWORK and MDT apply the se technology with respective features. However, no distinct development has bee n made in the digital models from geometric feature to manufacture feature. Prod uct information expression and the basic model frame of data exchange have been proposed based on STEP standards, but it is quite difficult to some extent ensur e the operability, due to the complexity in application. The models addressed in this paper divide the shared digital models (not data models) for product desig n and manufacture into five parts: ①Digital product 3D molding design; ②Digit al product technology process design; ③Digital product assembly design; ④Digit al product manufacture process design; ⑤Digital product management design. The resource model should not be included. And It should be a peripheral model i n product design; which is the innovative viewpoint of this paper. The core of above-mentioned five models is to access the digital model from the solid unit feature. Product definition should be determined on the basis of solid unit, and solid unit should follow the rules of "generation of machining processing", Therefore, the author also proposed the Constructing Cutting Geomet ry Method (CCG) in IMCC’2000. In this way, the integration of "forming - processing - assembling - machining - management" can be obtained. This is th e core originality of the paper.