Development Of Automatic Modeling System Of Automotive Leaf Spring

Nowadays, the CAD software used interiorly may be divided into domestic CAD software and foreign CAD software. Foreign CAD software is very popular because of its perfect function, excellent performance and accomplishment of engineering and commercial requirement. Foreign CAD software is generally universal. Therefore the secondary development is necessary to make the best of the software. CATIA is the famous CAD software, and is developed by Dassault Systems. CATIA is a CAD/CAM/CAE software integrating many functions such as shape design, mechanical design, finite element analysis, digital manufacturing processes and so on. As universal software, CATIA is adopted widely in the manufacturing industry, especially in the aerospace and shipbuilding, including automotive. But its specialty isn't obvious. Accordingly the secondary development based on CATIA is indispensable to meet the requirement of various industries. CATIA Version 5 is the first release of the latest generation of Dassault Systèmes software solutions. And it can be running on the Windows and UNIX environment. Besides the powerful function of design and manufacture, CATIA V5 offers the application development workbench that realizes the secondary development based on CATIA. By studying the methods of the secondary development based on CATIA and the OLE automation technique, the idea of the secondary development is advanced. And then the infrastructure of CATIA V5 is analyzed in detail. Lastly the automatic modeling system of automotive leaf spring is developed with Visual Basic 6.0, implementing the automatic modeling of the part and assembly in CATIA V5. The major research content and related conclusion of this paper are as follows: (1) Staring with OLE, a kind of new technique based on OLE 2.0, CATIA Automation, is introduced. CATIA Automation is the technique of object oriented absolutely. Using Visual Basic scripting language, CATIA can be controlled from the interior or exterior with programming method. (2) The infrastructure of CATIA V5 is analyzed in detail. Object diagrams, the root object, the same properties and methods of all objects and a few objects used...