A process planning method is presented in this paper to aid stereolithography users in the selection of appropriate values of build process variables in order to achieve specific goals and characteristics that are desirable in the end prototype. To accomplish this, user-defined input in the form of goal preferences and feature tolerances are used to control how the prototype will be built by way of process planning. The user inputs will be used to drive the creation of the process plan so that a prototype is produced, which reflects the intent of the operator. The process planning method is adapted from multi-objective optimization and utilizes empirical data, analytical models, and heuristics to quantitatively relate build process variables to goals of surface finish, accruacy, and build process variables to goals of surface finish, accuracy, and build time. The objective is to render decision support by handling tradeoffs among conflicting goals quantitatively and give the user some degree of insight into what quality of prototype may ultimately be produced. The process planning method is demonstrated on a part with non-trivial geometric features.
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