Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

High-Level, Product Type-Specific Programmatic Operations For Streamlining Associative Computer-Aided Design, Nathan W. Scott

Theses and Dissertations

Research in the field of Computer Aided Design (CAD) has long focused on reducing the time and effort required of engineers to define three dimensional digital product models. Parametric, feature-based modeling with inter-part associativity allows complex assembly designs to be defined and re-defined while maintaining the vital part-to-part interface relationships. The top-down modeling method which uses assembly level control structures to drive child level geometry has proved valuable in maintaining these interfaces. Creating robust parametric models like these, however, is very time consuming especially since there can be hundreds of features and thousands of mathematical expressions to create. Even if …