Design Automation of a Motor Hoisting Crane – Results of Student Project on Knowledge-Based CAD

Increasing the efficiency of designers indirectly affects the price of offered goods. Particularly in the case of variant designs for small series production, it is advantageous to automate repetitive activities as completely as possible during the respective development cycles. As known from Mass Customization, knowledge-based configurators are an ideal co-design tool for customers, which helps in defining all necessary requirements and the resulting product characteristics. At single universities, courses for design automation and configuration are available, like at the University of Hannover. This contribution puts a student team’s results of a semester project in this lecture in the focus. After a few introductory words about the teaching concept and the implementation of the lecture on knowledge-based CAD, the process of creation and detailed results of the project “motor hoisting crane”, which the co-authors performed, are described. This is complemented by a reflection of the learning process within the student team and possible future learning set-ups.