REAL-TIME GEOMETRIC SIMILARITY RETRIEVAL THROUGH FAST STRING MATCHING

This paper presents a CAD interface for intrinsic and real-time component standardization. A GT-like mechanical parts’ coding scheme has been also implemented and an intelligent integration with cost assessment through PDM and CNC code fast programming has been included. Basically two applets have been developed: the first is used to create a database of parts machined in the past by the company, and to encode new components when a 2D drawing is provided. The other can be used as a CAD add-on tool to be used for parts standardization. In both cases the components’ features are encoded in a string using a scheme based on the Group Technology (GT) approach; the matching is performed in real time thanks to an algorithms which compare correspondent fields of the strings. The paper briefly presents the encoding rules, the software applet developed, and the matching algorithm. The direct implementation and company’s PDM integration have been done in order to obtain an “on the road” test in order to evaluate designing times and efficiency in cost estimation and CNC code fast programming of a real mechanical component. After the 3 months usage, tests demonstrate a component diversity reduction by 20% on components already in production and over 30% in new parts developed exploiting the CAD interface.