FEAT-REP : representing features in CAD/CAM

Abstract

When CAD/CAM experts view a workpiece, they perceive it in terms of their own expertise. These terms, called features, which are build upon a syntax (geometry) and a semantic (e.g. skeletal plans in manufacturing or functional relations in design), provide an abstraction mechanism to facilitate the creation, manufacturing and analysis of workpieces. Our goal is to enable experts to represent their own feature-language via a feature-grammar in the computer to build feature-based systems e.g. CAPP systems. The application of formal language terminology to the feature definitions facilitates the use of well-known formal language methods in conjunction with our flexible knowledge representation formalism FEAT-REP which will be presented in this paper.