We are developing computer-aided mechanical design software in which all design tasks are performed within a single computational paradigm. Mechanical design is the task of devising an assembly of parts that performs a function reliably and economically. It is a ubiquitous activity that spans mechanical, electrical, and biomedical engineering. Designers need to devise, analyze, and compare competing design prototypes to produce optimal designs. Computer-aided design reduces design time and improves quality by allowing designers to substitute electronic prototypes for physical prototypes in diverse tasks.
We have developed a prototype design environment called HIPAIR for general planar assemblies. HIPAIR supports the key design tasks of simulation, parametric design, and functional tolerancing for a broad range of mechanical systems, such as mechanisms, part feeders, robotic arms, and knee prostheses. It is being used for micro-mechanism design at Sandia National Laboratory and for automotive transmission design at Ford Motors, Cologne.
HIPAIR organizes the design tasks around the fundamental task of kinematic analysis, which we automate by configuration space computation. Configuration space is a complete, concise, and explicit representation of rigid body interactions and contains the requisite information for design tasks involving kinematics. HIPAIR allows designers to perform computations that lie outside the scope of previous software and that defy manual analysis. It allows them to visualize system function under a range of operating conditions, to find and correct design flaws, and to evaluate the functional effects of part tolerances. It performs at interactive speed on tens of parts with tens of thousands of contacts.
This research is supported by NSF grants CCR-9617600 and CCR-9505745, by the Purdue Center for Computational Image Analysis and Scientific Visualization, by a Ford University Research Grant, by the Ford ADAPT200 project, and by grant 98/536 from the Israeli Academy of Sciences. |
