Key Technologies Of Computer Aided Fixture Structure Design

A lot of time has to be consumed in the design work of fixture structures during the design and manufacturing of a product, and fixture design is also a work that depends on designers' experiences and knowledge seriously. Computer aided fixture design (CAFD) can save, search and reuse the qualified fixture designs, and parametric methods as well as effective resource management can be applied in the design work of fixture components in CAFD. In this paper, the following researches have been studied.Function requirements of a CAFD system are analyzed, after which the framework of the system is proposed and the key technologies are discussed. Fixture structure design method based on Case-based reasoning is discussed. The problem description of a fixture structure case is analyzed, and the factors which may affect the fixture structure's design are sorted. A coding method is discussed, with which the problem of a fixture structure case is described. The search method of similar fixture structures is discussed, after which the calculating of the similarity is introduced, of which the flow is proposed. An open parametric part family method is proposed, which is based on the parametric and database technology. In this method, the resource library is open to the users and can be appended freely; the parameters of a part are open too, which enables the further parametric work of the models. The resources and information that are involved in the design work of a fixture structure are analyzed, which are organized through a hierarchy method. The storage of the resources is discussed. A computer aided fixture design supporting system is developed, whose modules are introduced. It is also verified with some instances.