A database system of mechanical components based on geometric and topological similarity. Part II: indexing, retrieval, matching, and similarity assessment

This paper presents an approach for retrieving and matching similar designs in a database of mechanical components. The retrieval and matching process is based on the geometric and topological similarity between mechanical components. The process constitutes five steps: (i) transforming the component from the CAD system in STEP format, (ii) building an attributed graph for it, (iii) abstracting the graph into some geometric entities, (iv) retrieving a set of similar graphs based on the abstracted data, and (v) matching the graph of the new design with each graph on the set of similar graphs. This paper addresses the last three steps. Retrieving and matching mechanical parts based on their shape has many applications such as cost estimation and process planning. Matching similar parts and calculating a similarity index for them has applications in manufacturing evaluation, design by case-based reasoning, robotics, and computer integrated manufacturing. Having a database system of mechanical components based on part shape serves in all of these applications. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All fights reserved.