Toward automated design for manufacturing feedback

Abstract

Iterative loops and rework between design, manufacturing, and testing delay the development lead time for complex products like vehicles. This research focuses on creating an automated design for manufacturing (DFM) feedback system (ADFS) framework that reduces these iterations by providing early, fast, and informative feedback on manufacturability to designers. The proposed ADFS analyzes manufacturability in terms of part geometry with respect to a given set of process capabilities based on DFM guidelines for vehicle manufacturing. In order to increase the fidelity of the search, a heuristic approach to obtain manufacturing process fitness with respect to a part design is introduced. The proposed system framework will help to identify suitable manufacturing processes more quickly as well as provide visual feedback for geometric advice at the feature level with regard to the selected processes.