Technique Study And Software Development For Cable-Drum Glass Regulator Based On KBE

To follow the internationalization and drastic competition, automotive manufactures have to start study for new design flow which could help them shortening product development cycle, improving product quality and cutting down the development cost. So, it's necessary and inevitable for them to develop and apply lots of high-tech from informatics and computer science in their design and manufacture to shorten product's development and manufacture cycle. For recent years, automatization based on Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) is more and more implemented in automotive development. It puts more attentions on the whole development process of automobile and applies the knowledge in all the cycle.As an internationally outstanding PLM software company which offers the associated software development and services, UGS is always pursuing the concept which would bring KBE into automatization module of automotive design. The module would be much convenient for automotive and its parts design. Glass Regulator Design Module discussed in this paper is just developed with the special tools which are offered by UG for fast parameterization design of auto-body parts.Conception design is very important for an auto-body design. Auto-body structure and most parameters could be decided in this phase while some parameters would impact the validity and cycle of following work. In the other hand, the cost for conception design nearly comes to 70% of total development's. Changes in this phase are most easy to be carried out and lowest cost while they would do best for save product's cost. So, concurrent engineering and cooperation could be used in this phase to consider product's manufacturability, assembly and maintenance-ability. They would greatly help to reduce or avoid the following reduplicated work and shorten development cycle.The door system is an important sub assembly in auto-body design. It consists of amount of independent accessories which is packaged in the narrow close space between outer panel and inner panel. Besides, most of them are movable and some ones would influence the design the associated accessories. So, every designer meets with the problem: how to complete these accessories'design and package so that implement the concurrent design and parametrical association between the door and its accessories."Cross Drum Glass Regulator Design Module Based on KBE"absorbs and merges most topology information and correlative knowledge so that simplifies the associated design flow. It brings designers out of embarrassment of heavy work on creating or editing model. It helps designers to quickly finish the parameterized design, package, interference check and pressure analysis which would cost a long time and much energies of an experienced designer in traditional flow. The module does well for design on to point: first, it improves the effect and quality of design for automotive door design in conception phase; second, it presents an Expert System (ES) which loosens requirement of designers for their experiences. Knowledge referred here mainly derives from automotive design standard, industrial criterions and auto-body designers'experiences."Cross Drum Glass Regulator Design Module Based on KBE"takes outer glass styling surface, inner door panel, bottom edge of door window and edges (except the bottom one) of glass as geometry inputs, then outputs a regenerated glass and the parameterized model of glass regulator system with the geometry inputs and the parameter inputs from UI interaction for parts'dimensions and their location. It also calculates and outputs some system performance parameters such as driving force, toque, revolution numbers of the motor or the hand-crank and some parameters of glass including its weight, gravity center, travel journey, travel cycle and lifting speed. But the most helpful and important point is it could be used to simulate movement of the mechanics and check its interference with other door accessories which users want.Technique keys for the design module are:1. UDU development environment;2. Implement Wizard UI for interaction;3. Use Third-party development tool UG/Open API to build the parameterized model;4. Make parts parameterized and standardized by UDF based KF; 5. Data control and creation of editable feature with KF etc... We have finished the test on the module for its stability and functionalities. And the result proves its practicability even though there are some points should be improved and reinforced.Compared with existed design modules, it keeps its advantage in the followings:1. Capture and make use of experiences and professional knowledge;2. Consider accessories package and the tolerances in auto-body conception design;3. Utilize wizard UI to simplify the design flow and reduce operation mistake;4. Be used for concurrent design of auto-body.Automatization and intelligentization of auto-body design are current pop topic. This paper mainly discusses the development of cross drum glass regulator and introduces the development method of auto-body accessories parameterized-design system based on KBE. It could be studied as a reference of auto-body design system development for conception design phase.