In Proceedings of the 15th ASME International Computers in Engineering
Conference (CIE), Boston, Massachusetts, Sept. 1995, pp. 699-712.
Available as:
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pdf, pdf.gz, ps, ps.Z, ps.gz
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An Efficient System for Geometric Assembly Sequence
Generation and Evaluation
by Bruce Romney, Cyprien Godard, Michael Goldwasser and G. Ramkumar
Abstract:
In this paper, we present a software system which can automatically
determine how to assemble a product from its parts, given only a
geometric description of the assembly. Incorporated into a larger CAD
tool, this sytem, the Stanford Assembly Analysis Tool (STAAT), could
thus provide immediate feedback to a team of product designers about
the complexity of assemblying the product being designed. This would
be particularly useful in complex assemblies where each designer may
not be fully aware of the impact of his desig changes on the
assemblability of the product as a whole. STAAT's underlying data
structure is an efficient version of the non-directional blocking
graph (NDBG), a compact representation of the blocking relationships
in an assembly. STAAT implements several techniques using this
stucture, under a unified approach in which the same software
``machinery'' can analyze the product under different assembly
constraints. In initial experiments conducted on relatively small
polyhedral assemblies of 20 to 40 parts and 500 to 1500 faces, using
one-step translational motions, STAAT generated assembly sequences
much more quickly than did previous NDBG-based systems. We are
working now on extending both these results as the underlying theory
to more sophisticated cases.
Michael Goldwasser