Progressive Die Design Change Management Based On NX

Progressive die is widely used in light industry, electronic industry, automobile industry, communication industry, etc. Since its complex structure consists of hundreds of components demanding high precision, it is really a challenging job to designers and die makers. There is a lot of change work during the complex design process of the progressive die; it is difficult to guarantee the consistency and accuracy of the design data and the design efficiency via the designers editing the design data interactively after design change. In order to bring more convenience and efficiency to the design course, CAD/CAM system should have a strong ability to deal with the design change automatically. This thesis is dedicated to the implementation, control and management of the design change in the progressive die CAD system based on NX.Design change should handle the following problems: how to build the association between each part of the design result; when and how to update the other part of the design data efficiently after design change in order to maintain the consistency and accuracy of the design result; how to perform effective management on the components involved in design change. According to the content and the characteristics of the progressive die design, the author adopts the approaches of parametric variable association, smart object & object collector, geometry association based on WAVE and object association using UDO(user defined object)to build the progressive die design data association; controls the update process by detaining the data update and performing update together in a later time; employs component clone, assembly arrangement & component suppression and role-based permission management to manage the parts involved in design change, which result in the promotion of the operability and update efficiency of design change.Based on the theories and methodology mentioned above, a hierarchical progressive die assembly model supporting top-down design method is proposed and a NX-based progressive die CAD system with excellent design change capability is developed. The author emphatically studies the automatic handling of the piecing process structure design change, as well as the part management towards the three types of entire design change i.e. similar stamping part changeover, additional die design and concurrent design, which promotes the progressive die design efficiency and quality greatly.