Intelligent location-dimensioning of cylindrical surfaces in mechanical parts

This paper presents an intelligent dimensioning approach to generate location-dimensions of the cylindrical surfaces in mechanical parts, for their two-dimensional drawing automatically from their three-dimensional part models based on feature extraction. The key issues include the strategies and methods to establish an order of priorities for location-dimensioning of the cylindrical surfaces in mechanical parts, to eliminate their location-dimension redundancy, to determine location-dimensioning scheme, to assign the necessary location-dimensions to suitable views, and to locate them in reasonable positions for each view using artificial intelligent techniques. Based on the approach, a corresponding software prototype was developed. Finally, it is demonstrated, from an example of location-dimensioning, that the location-dimensions of all the holes in the multi-spindle headstock of a modular machine tool, were generated successfully using this intelligent dimensioning software prototype. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.