A critical review of feature recognition techniques

Abstract

Feature is an essential concept during design and manufacturing. It has universal characters for specific definitions of interest. Feature Recognition (FR) is a technique to identify and extract application-specific information from input models for downstream engineering activities. FR is a necessary and important component for the integration of Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), and Computer-Aided Process Planning (CAPP). Decades of research work in this topic has developed numerous techniques such as rule-based, graph-based, volume decomposition, and artificial neural network-based systems. However, there still exist issues that hinder FR to become a practical engineering tool. This paper presents a critical literature review of these approaches.