A COMPUTATIONALLY EFFICIENT APPROACH TO FEATURE ABSTRACTION IN DESIGN-MANUFACTURING INTEGRATION

Design-for-Manufacturing (DFM) analysis saves time and reduces production costs by anticipating manufacturing problems at a product's design stage. Performing manufacturing analysis of a design created by Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems requires a higher level of geometrical abstraction of its component features. For complicated parts, such as those found in injection molding, this problem becomes very difficult. The current approach presents a computationally efficient approach to converting the basic topological elements used in CAD systems into more abstract geometrical features necessary for DFM analysis. Very large computer models of parts have been subjected to feature recognition using the current system, ManuFEATURE with significant success.