Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Automating Tolerance Synthesis: A Framework And Tools, Stephen C.-Y. Lu, Robert G. Wilhelm

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper describes CASCADE-T—a new approach to tolerance synthesis that uses a complete representation of the conditional tolerance relations that exist between features of a part under design. Conditional tolerances are automatically determined from functional requirements and shape information. Tolerance primitives based on the virtual boundary requirements approach to tolerance representation are composed to form more complex tolerance relationships. Artificial intelligence techniques, including a constraint network, frame-based system, and dependency tracking are used to support flexible and detailed computation for tolerance analysis and synthesis.