An aggregate weld product model for the early design stages

Existing product models do not adequately support the modelling of weld products during the early design stages. A newly developed aggregate product model for welding is introduced, which forms part of CAPABLE, a concurrent engineering toolkit for machining and welding. This product model supports the representation of the design at multiple levels of detail and allows the rapid modelling of alternative designs where solid model representation is inappropriate. The potential applications of the aggregate product model in weld product design, such as the integration of joint design and weldability assessment, are discussed using simple examples. The design of weld products must consider process-dependent properties including geometry, materials combinations, and weld joint characteristics to arrive at a near-optimal configuration. The object-oriented and feature-based model structure of CAPABLE enhances the design process by the automatic generation of compatible options and allows rapid design evaluation. The aggregate product model provides the input data necessary for tasks like process selection, optimization, process sequencing, fixture design and welding orientation selection. The main advantage of this product model over traditional CAD environments is that planning of the welding and fabrication operations can start during the conceptual and embodiment stages of the design process, thus ensuring the concurrency of design and planning tasks and resulting in product and process improvement and cost reduction.