Feature-based assembly for aeronautics

The research work presented in these paper concerns the study of concepts related to assembly features, and the development of a system prototype carried out in the aeronautics field. The work is motivated by the fact that the design of mechanical assemblies carried out using today's CAD systems is mainly developed by modeling single parts, and then assembling them in a subsequent design phase. This bottom-up approach is not congruent and not satisfying the way designers are used to design assemblies. The introduction of the feature-based approach in assembly design would allow the designers to start drawing the assembly using a top down approach leaving the design of details and sub-systems to a following phase, The work described in the first part of the paper focuses on the concepts related to assembly design, the definition of an assembly feature, and a formalism for the representation of assembly models. The second part of the paper describes the approach followed for the formalization and the validation of the knowledge acquired on assembly features, before embedding it into a CAD system.