Manufacturing Feature Instances: Which Ones to Recognize?
Manufacturing Feature Instances: Which Ones to Recognize?
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Date
1998-10-15
Authors
Gupta, Satyandra K.
Regli, William C.
Nau, Dana S.
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Abstract
Manufacturing features and feature-based representations have
become an integral part of research on manufacturing systems, largely
due to their ability to model correspondences between design
information and manufacturing operations. However, several research
challenges still must be addressed in order to place feature technologies
into a solid scientific and mathematical framework. One challenge
is the issue of alternatives in feature-based planning.
Even after one has decided upon an abstract set of features to
use for representing manufacturing operations, the set of feature
instances used to represent a complex part is by no means
unique. For a complex part, many (sometimes infinitely many) different
manufacturing operations can potentially be used to manufacture various
portions of the partand thus many different feature instances can be
used to represent these portions of the part. Some of these feature
instances will appear in useful manufacturing plans, and others will not.
If the latter feature instances can be discarded at the outset, this will
reduce the number of alternative manufacturing plans to be examined in
order to find a useful one. Thus, what is required is a systematic means of
specifying wllich feature instances are of interest.
This paper addresses the issue of alternatives by introducing the
notion of primary feature instances, which we contend are sufficient to
generate all manufacturing plans of interest. To substantiate our
argument, we describe how various instances in the primary feature set
can be used to produce the desired plans. Furthermore, we discuss how
this formulation overcomes computational difficulties faced by previous
work, and present some complexity results for this approach in the
domain of machined parts.
(Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-94-127)