A flexible assembly retrieval approach for model reuse

Nowadays, growing quantities of product models are created in industries. Usually, these models contain abundant design knowledge, either explicit or implicit, in various disciplines. As an approach to taking full advantage of the design knowledge embedded, model reuse plays an increasingly important part in complex product design and innovative design, in which enormous time and cost can be saved. While model retrieval is a natural and promising way to help designers find the right models for quick and accurate reuse, the retrieval technology for assemblies is yet to reach maturity since the previous text-based or low-level content-based assembly retrieval could not fully support the needs of users. In this paper, a new assembly retrieval approach is presented, based on which, users can input flexible queries, either rough or precise, to retrieve efficiently the whole or partial assemblies they want from the product library. First, a multilevel assembly descriptor supporting various searching requirements is elaborated, which collects different levels of information in assembly models. Then, the corresponding matching and similarity assessment methods with well-balanced efficiency and discriminability are given to evaluate the differences between assembly models. Moreover, an indexing mechanism for accelerating assembly retrieval, especially the partial retrieval, is presented to filter the unmatchable models quickly. Finally, an assembly retrieval prototype system is implemented, and the experimental results are analyzed to verify the advantages of the flexible assembly retrieval approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.