Title: Conceptual development of an automated assemblies tolerance analysis system

Authors: Bryan Kok Ann Ngoi, Yew Chuan Kuan

Addresses: Production Division, School of Mechanical and Production Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore. ' Production Division, School of Mechanical and Production Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore

Abstract: The approach adopted by current dimensional tolerance analysis has many limitations. One obvious weaknesses is its handicap in handling 3-dimensional assemblies. The objective of this paper is to address this area and look into the possibility of integrating a new approach to deal with such problems. Tolerances in assemblies are determined by the tolerances of each component. This requires a complete representation of the assembly information explicitly. The system requires relatively simple input data, parts dimensions with tolerances and mating conditions. This reduces the need for manual specification of the assembly configuration through automatic design and analysis of assemblies. For under-constrained assemblies, the remaining degrees of freedom are automatically coalesced into a set of kinematics joints that automatically capture the functionality of the assembly. For over-constrained situations, redundant constrasts are identified and checked for consistency and multiple feature relationships are allowed between the two parts. A concept for the initial stage of the development principle is outlined in this paper and its implementation in computer-aided design (CAD) in a way that is also useful for CAPP, CAM, robotic assembly, BOM and CIM is presented.

Keywords: assembly models; dimensional tolerance analysis; kinematics; solid modelling; automated assembly; computer-aided design; CAD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.1996.062295

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 1996 Vol.9 No.1, pp.9 - 17

Published online: 03 Jun 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article