Integration of computer-aided design and manufacturing through artificial intelligence based process planning

Developing an integrated manufacturing environment has been the aim of many research and development efforts. There are many areas of manufacturing which need integration. The research effort reported in this thesis is directed towards the integration of design, process planning and manufacturing. The principal notion used is system integration through information integration.;As part of the solution strategy, a module to analyze the symbolic geometry from a global perspective is developed. This module imitates a human process planner and derives some overall assertions. The enhanced geometry data is then used by a rule based expert system to develop the process plan.;The validity of the principles used in this research and the approach suggested for integration is verified using a system called Microplan, which is implemented on a micro computer and capable of developing process plans for axi-symmetrical, rotational, machined parts.;The main outcome of this research effort is an artificial intelligence based computer aided generative process planning system, which would use a feature based symbolic geometry as its input. The feature based symbolic data structure is used as the common data between design, process planning and manufacturing. As the commercial computer aided design systems would not generate a feature based data base, special interfaces are designed and used.