Process-condition-driven Automatic Location of Components

In order to reduce the development cycle of mechanical products and corresponding toolings, a large number of components are utilized in these structures. Accordingly, automatic location method for components is a key issue in the research on intelligent computer aided design (CAD) techniques. Integrated with the investigation into intelligent design techniques for aircraft manufacturing toolings, in-depth researches on this issue are conducted. Formalized automatic location principles, representative methods and implementation algorithms are proposed and established. First, several terms and their formalized representative methods including process condition, location base and location operator are defined. Second, computation modeling of components automatic location and methods of location transformation are proposed. Then, definition of base structure and some key algorithms for automatic location are introduced. These principles and algorithms are developed, applied and verified in research project “Jig Intelligent CAD (JigICAD) System”.