Associative assembly design features: concept, implementation and application

摘要

This paper presents a new type of feature, associative assembly design feature. Its concept, implementation, and application are introduced. This new feature allows the following associations: (1) between parts that have not been defined geometrically; (2) between geometric entities defining interfaces between parts; and (3) between part geometry and intermediate geometry used to define a part. The associations can be geometric or non-geometric. Our extension to traditional assembly feature properties allows product architectures to be defined using features. These architectures, in turn, can be used to constrain the modular design of assembly geometry. The application is a mould base library for injection mould design.