A System of Rapid Process Planning for Machine Features

Process planning is a bridge between product designing and product manufacturing, feature is the basic definition of components for design or manufacturing. This paper presents a rapid process planning system dependent on the parametric machine features of parts. Firstly, a new knowledge expression based on the Parametric Procedure Charts (PPC) is adopted to express the features, PPC is a visual direction chart that presents the contents and the structure of the knowledge simulating the human beings thinking, which combines predication logic, semantic network and flow chart technology. Then PPC template is pre-created for each part family. To plan the process of a new part, the system extracts machine features from 3D part model via 3D CAD system’s APIs or general 3D model conversion interfaces, searches the proper PPC that feature belongs to according to the unique name, and evaluates parameters of the PPC based on the new feature’s dimensions or technological information, then explains and reasons procedure by solving various constraints defined by chart units of PPC. Finally, sequences the features process by appropriate principles, and outputs the process plan sheets. A software system name Para-KMCAPP is developed on KMCAPP platform, which has been successfully applied in some equipment enterprises for rapid process panning for some part family.