A Preliminary Study Of The Virtual Design Of Mechanical Products

Based on the computer science, Virtual design technology integrates computer graphics, artificial intelligence, computer net-work, information processing, mechanical design & manufacture. By the simulation of the whole course of the product's R&D, the aim of reducing the cost, shorting the lead time and improving the competition ability of the company can be achieved.The paper gives a basic study of the virtual design system. The process of the product developing and the meaning of virtual design technology in the design of mechanical product are discussed. Base on the discussion above the prototype of the virtual design system YD-VDS is designed.The virtual design system, developed with the virtual reality developing tool, usually doesn't own the function of building and modifying the complex model. The model of mechanical product is usually created with the software of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and the pre-assembly is done. So it is necessary to study the data-exchange between CAD software and Virtual Design System. Three ways is discussed and the way based on the re-development of the CAD software is discussed and realized in detail.Virtual design environment offers the operation interface of the virtual design system for the custom and it is the container of all parts designed in the virtual design system. The design environment for the product is built by loading the parts of the product into the Virtual Design System. The feature of the model should be redefined according to mechanical science such as the definition of property for the part. The scene tree is constructed and associated with the models and its element in the virtual design environment. In order to manipulate the model freely, the model must be dragged and rotated and the model with its element can be selected with mouse.The structure of the virtual assembly is studied, the basic constraints,assembly elements couple are defined . In order to make the result of the simulation authentic, the collision dictation is done when the model is dragged by the custom. The algorithm of improving the collision detection quality and speed is discussed and put forward. At last , the system is tested with the design of water tube inserting parts .All of the process is done such as model building,data extraction,model loading and topology structure,virtual assembly etc..