Assembly operation process planning by mapping a virtual assembly simulation to real operation

• A solution for assembly operation's process planning based on interactive virtual assembly is proposed.
• Interactive assembly operation is used to obtain the actions of operation sequence.
• Assembly operation cards are created according to the real operation actions.
• An operation semantics model is used to replace the geometric constraints model of assembly.

Virtual assembly has been widely used in product development. However, virtual operation and actual operation are different in time and space, the simulation of interactive virtual assembly cannot support the assembly operation's process planning directly. In this paper, the solution for assembly operation's process planning is developed based on interactive virtual assembly. According to the solution, interactive assembly operation is used to obtain the actions of operation sequence. The actions are mapped into the data of a real operation action to obtain real operation actions. Then assembly operation cards can be obtained. To support the assembly operation actions obtained through virtual assembly simulation, a product assembly model is proposed. An operation semantic model is used to replace the geometric constraint model of assembly, which contains several ordered geometric constraints and some engineering restriction conditions. To test the solution and the models, one process planning example of an automobile engine is introduced. The results verified the feasibility and the effectiveness of the methods.