Integration of Feature Templates in Product Structures Improves Knowledge Reuse

In today's product development, the use of templates to reuse knowledge and existing design solutions is well-established. Most CAD systems offer functions for defining and storing design knowledge, but user-friendly classification and structuring is still a matter of research. As a consequence, the retrieval of existing templates is challenging and instead of reusing design knowledge in successive development projects, new design solutions have to be created. In this paper an approach to structure Feature Templates is introduced. The approach is based on the generic product structure, which provides extensive contextual information about possible applications of templates. By integrating structural information about Feature Templates into the product structure, reuse of existing design knowledge can be improved. The approach is exemplarily applied to the assembly of a planetary gear and an elastomer coupling.