Interacting manufacturing features in CAPP systems

Abstract

Most of computer-aided process planning (CAPP) systems for machining process planning offer the functions for feature recognition. Nevertheless, these functions have limited functionality, restricting the usage of CAPP systems. The research works clearly show that one of the main factors blocking the feature technology is the recognition of interacting features. The paper presents the algorithm for the efficient recognition of interacting features. The starting point is the assumption that manufacturing knowledge plays the crucial role in the feature recognition. The manufacturing knowledge decides how to group the basic geometric entities into the manufacturing features. The presented algorithm uses the feature refinement function, converting the initial set of features into the other set of features based on the manufacturing knowledge and the function for local feature recognition. The algorithm is relatively simple, while taking into account the requirements imposed on the feature recognition systems.