CFACA: component framework for feature-based design and process planning

Automatic generation of manufacturing information from design has been the research focus in advanced CAD/CAM applications, i.e. feature-based applications for design, process planning and other automated manufacturing applications. However, our current development mode has seriously troubled research in these application fields. For example, with our current development mode, the functionality and data of one application cannot be accessed by other applications; applications are monolithic, they are time-consuming to develop and hard to customize and update for meeting the user's requirements. Typically, each researcher has to develop independently a complete set of new monolithic application almost built from scratch to create features and then perform various process-planning functionalities. This development mode leads to such a tremendous and tough work in advanced CAD/CAM applications that, though researchers in these fields have developed countless feature-based application programs, the problem of integrating CAD and CAM applications is still largely unsolved. From the viewpoint of component technology, we seem to be wasting more time than we should be, doing ineffective work that is orders of magnitude greater and harder. The component technology, which emerged in the 1990s, has been widely regarded as the software devel opment technology of tomorrow, and is changing the development mode of the software industry now, but has never been explored in advanced CAD/CAM application fields. The paper introduces a method of achieving the new technology in advanced CAD/CAM application fields. As an example, the paper discusses in detail the interface components in feature-based machining application domain to explain how the component technology is used in a specific advanced CAD/CAM field and how powerful the technology is. The framework in the paper is the first component framework for advanced CAD/CAM applications. Because the component technology provides developers with much more productive and powerful development mode, it is believed that this development technology is the technology of tomorrow in advanced CAD/CAM fields, and that it will change the development mode of advanced CAD/CAM applications. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.