A Study Of Computer Aided Form Design For Product Style

The driving force for the development of modem manufacturing industry isAdvanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT), while design and innovation areplaying the leading role. Industrial Design is an important means through whichdesign innovation can be realized. With the fiercer market competition and users'growing requirements on the individuation and diversification of products, theperceptive features of products such as product form style, aesthetic characteristic etc.have become the key factors for product competition. Whereas the traditional designis the trial-and-error method based on designer's intuition and experiences, which islack of objective and reliable scientific method. Therefore, supported by the NationalHigh-Tech. R&D Program (863) and the National Natural Science Foundation,meeting the need of informatization of the modem manufacturing industry and thedemand of enterprises for innovative design, the author has systematically studied thekey technologies of Computer Aided Form Design for Product Style (CAFDFPS) inthis paper based upon the digitization technologies. Some important achievementshave been attained which could be a push to the development of industry and theapplication of the innovative form design of Aeronautics and Astronautics industry.1. Introduction The significance of industrial design for an enterprise topromote the ability of design and innovation is analyzed and the issue of form designmeeting the user's perceptive need is studied. Aiming at the current research results ofthe Computer Aided Form Design home or abroad, the techniques of CAFDFPS arepresented. The objectives and contents of the studies are determined.2. Research on the scheme of CAFDFPS The design strategies ofCAFDFPS are proposed, the technology architecture of CAFDFPS for the designprocess is outlined and the key techniques are confirmed. In the end, the CAFDFPSprocess model is built.3. Research of the style description Targeting on the problems reflected inthe traditional form design which is designer-oriented and is experiential and fuzzy,a model of style semantic quantitatively description is established by KanseiEngineering method. The model provides a structured and quantitative frame ofproduct style information which is applied for the refinement scoring mechanism andsemantic description of product style. The template of quantitated semantic description of product style information and the database of product style informationare established; the product style information management by computer is realized.The mathematic representations of the style model and method of calculating theclass-subclass and similarity of product styles are established. Combined with shapefeatures, the methods of product style analysis and evaluation by computer areestablished.4. Research on the prototype method of CAFDFPS A Computer AidedForm Design method for product style based on prototype is proposed to improve thetraditional trial-and-error design method based on experience. A model of feature-based product form prototype is established. A method of product form prototypevariant design by the Top Base Skeleton is presented. The methods of controllingvariant design are given. Form prototype serving as the design basis, the mappingrelation between style constrains and form design variables is set up, which isconvenient for computer modeling and control.A method to determine the most influential form components for a given productstyle by a gray relational analysis model is proposed. The most influential formcomponents are selected by the gray relational degree. An approach to determine thebest design combination of product form components for matching a given productstyle by a neural network mode is presented. The BP neural network mode is built and,the training method is given. The performance of the method is tested by a sample.5. Research on the gene algorithm of CAFDFPS An approach based ongene algorithm to the intelligent form design for product style is presented. The designmodel is set up. A method of expressing the product form design scheme by the geneis put forward. The adaptive function based on BP neural network mode is established.The method of gene crossover and mutation is given. The termination rules ofevolution are built. The performance of the approach is tested by a sample. Anintelligentization and automatization design process is realized by the method.6. Research on the CAFDFPS software system The CAFDFPS prototypesystem architecture is presented. CAID toolkits for enterprise designer are designed.The development techniques of the software are discussed. The CAFDFPS prototypesystem is developed. After being tested on the product form design of digitalhousehold appliance, the results have verified the methods presented in the paper.