Title: An agent-based system approach to fixture design

Authors: Sertac Pehlivan, Joshua D. Summers, Farhad Ameri

Addresses: Ebru Television, 300 Franklin Square Drive, Somerset, NJ 08873, USA. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, 250 Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building, Clemson, SC 29631, USA. ' Engineering Technology Department, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX 78666, USA

Abstract: The development of an integrated computer-aided fixture design (CAFD) environment is heavily influenced by system architecture. Many of the architectures that have been employed in developing CAFD tools have followed a traditional or a concurrent engineering design process model, driven by the traditional notions of systematic fixture design. This paper takes a new approach by exploring the fundamental differences between various distributed design architectures, with the goal of matching the requirements for an extendable CAFD environment capitalising on the strengths of various system architecture templates to support the requisites of fixture design information support. Ultimately, an architecture is proposed and illustrated through a case study.

Keywords: computer-aided fixture design; CAFD; agents; distributed architectures; computer-aided design; CAD; informatics; agent-based system; multi-agent systems; MAS; distributed design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2009.028050

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2009 Vol.36 No.3/4, pp.284 - 296

Published online: 02 Sep 2009 *

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