An integrated approach to automated assembly planning for three-dimensional mechanical products

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Abstract
This paper discusses a methodology for automatic generation of assembly plans for three-dimensional mechanical products. The primary goal is to develop an effective way to describe and plan the assembly of mechanical products. The proposed methodology starts with the creation of solid models for the assembly design. Mating and collision information are inferred from the assembly solid models. A frame-based representation scheme is also used to explicitly represent the assembly non-geometric information. In generating assembly plans, & two-state planning scheme is used. In the initial planning, assembly plans are generated based solely on product geometry considerations. A three-level planning strategy has been developed which analyses the part connectivity relationships in a hierarchical manner and ensures collision-free insertion of individual parts. The initial assembly plans are further revised in the second stage under sequence: constraints derived from non-geometric properties. Both high-level assembly sequence information and low-level assembly process details are included in the final assembly plans, allowing feasibility of application in different manufacturing environments. In addition to generating feasible assembly plans, the same methodology is applied to analyse the assemblability of a product during its design stage. The proposed planning stratety is graph-based and independent of the domain of assembly models. It can be extended easily to cover most mechanical products.

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