Decisions made during the design of a machined part can significantly affect the product's cost, quality, and lead time. Thus, in order to address the goals of concurrent engineering, it is important to evaluate the machinability of the proposed design, so that the designer can change the design to improve its machinability, To determine the machinability of the part, all of the possible alternative ways to machine the part should be generated, and their machinability evaluated. This chapter describes the techniques we have developed to do this automatically.

The information provided by these techniques will prove useful in two ways: (1) to provide information to the manufacturing engineer about alternative ways in which the part might be machined, and (2) to provide feedback to the designer identifying problems that may arise with the machining.