Research And Development Of Shaft CAD System (ShaftCAD) Based On Feature And Database

The shaft is the important part of a machine and the most common part, and also the core of design of moving parts in the machine products. But the design and drawing of a shaft is very complex, sometimes we have to do some repetitious work. On the traditional artificial design method, the designer have to take a lot of time and energy to design, so it is very often to make the mistake. Besides, the designers have to pay more attention to the repetitious work, so they have no more time to make creative design, as the result the development period of product is extended, the quality of product may be not very good and also weaken the market competition ability.On the basis of the former's researching fruit about shaft CAD, this subject analyze the shaft-like part and defining global product model with feature-based modeling technology, manage the parameter and design results with PDM technology, simplify the design procedure, accelerate the speed of computation with Neural Network technology and MATLAB tool, and develop the special CAD system for shaft-ShaftCAD with Parameterization technology, Object-oriented technology and development kit.ShaftCAD is developed on Windows 2000 and AutoCAD 2000 with Visual C++ 6.0, Visual FoxPro 6.0 and ObjectARX 2000. ShaftCAD comprise three main parts: Product Data Management subsystem, Parameterization Drawing subsystem and Parameterization Computing subsystem. These subsystems are independent and cooperate each other, and each subsystem can be used independently. Product Data Management subsystem can be used to manage the product data and result of design of each feature-based segment of shaft. Parameterization Drawing subsystem can be used to draw automatically the segment of shaft according to the input data. Parameterization Computing subsystem can be used to design the structure of shaft, analyze the force on the shaft, and verify the intensity andrigidity of a shaft. On the basis of complete results of the shaft design, the system can manage the product data, so the subsequent CAPP/CAM system can get information from it.The development idea and method introduced to ShaftCAD have some meaning in theory and practical value for researching and development new-style CAD systems.