Evaluation of Environmental Loads Based on 3D-CAD

The impact design oil the disposal process referred to as the late stage of the product life cycle, is becoming important. Product lifecycle management tools based on the 3Rs, reuse, recycle, and/or reduce, using exsiting design technologies is needed. To consider environmental loads at the early stages of product design leads to significant reductions in the environmental loads for the whole product life cycle. In the present paper, we propose an object-oriented design system that helps the designer to consider environmental loads at the early stage of product design using a combination of 3D-CAD and an application of evaluation methods for determining environmental loads. Our proposed system compiles existing evaluation formulae and material data for the environmental loads. Designers just create the 3D-CAD solid model which has the attribute information in the 3D-CAD model itself, such as designer's intention, disposal process, material properties, and so oil. The present study applies the proposed system to the evaluation of the environmental loads of in example problem, that is, an office chair model created using 3D-CAD.