Product design-optimization integration via associative optimization feature modeling

This paper addresses an important problem of integrating structural optimization into a traditional CAx system and therefore, realizes an integrated product design-optimization system. Specifically, structural optimization has been embedded as an independent module of most commercial CAx systems. It mainly communicates with CAD but can only have the STL-based CAD geometry as input. The knowledge-level information transfer is not supported which causes the optimization intent not fully captured. The consequence could be quite negative that the optimization process generates unsatisfactory or even useless design solutions and tedious manual efforts are required to modify or even redesign the immature solutions, which reduces the overall design efficiency and quality. To fix this issue, this paper proposes an integrated product design-optimization system by enabling the complete information transfer between CAD and structural optimization modules. Interfacing rules have been defined to enable the complete information transfer and the associative optimization feature concept is proposed to manage the transferred information for the structural optimization module. Furthermore, knowledge based reasoning is performed to capture the full optimization intent in order to create a fit-for-purpose optimization model, including both the optimization problem formulation and the solution strategy. For technical merits, this integrated product design-optimization system robustly ensures the timely and high-quality product design delivery which is superior to the existing commercial systems. Effectiveness of this proposed system has been proven through a few case studies.