Virtual Assembly Environment for Product Design Evaluation and Workplace Planning

DFX technologies require evaluating the multiple aspects of product performance as early as possible, while virtual assembly with digital model can be used to realize the DFX idea. By using human-friendly oriented VR technology, the digital model evaluation for assembleability can be performed at the early stage of product development, so as to replace the evaluation of real physical model as much as possible. With the purple of building a virtual assembly experimental environment, system architecture of virtual assembly environment for product design and assembly workplace evaluation has been proposed, and key technologies for implementing virtual assembly environment have been discussed, such as VR application oriented general software development platform, virtual model descriptions, virtual assembly operation based on constraint and degree of freedom analysis, multiple interaction mode and ergonomic evaluation for user's assembly operation and so on. At the end, two kinds of applications for ship pipeline and auto engine have been carried out respectively to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of virtual assembly environment technology.