Design of a system for computer-aided engineering of manufacturing facilities

This paper first defines the activities involved in manufacturing facility design and reviews relevant computer tools; these include CAD used to create static models, and simulators also tackling logistical behaviour information. A feasibility study of hard-merging CAD and simulation is briefly described. Next, the architecture of software flexibly combining CAD, simulation and intelligence is presented, based on the object-oriented Fusion method. The system includes an object library with rules defining behaviour, knowledge based pertinent to various 'jobs' within the activities of facility design, a reasoning engine that draws conclusions during and after execution of these jobs, and a graphical library of facility components potentially displayed through a real-time link to a CAD system. The novelty of the system pertains to flexible encapsulation of object behaviour and of intelligent design decisions, as well as to the capability of approximating a virtual environment through accurate graphics models. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.