Extended variational design technology—foundation for integrated design automation

Abstract

Engineering design is an iterative process with a fundamental need for the consistent management and propagation of product dependencies. Constraint-based design provides a unified framework to meet this critical need, but there are known issues due to the complexity of the problem within three-dimensional space. This paper presents results from a decade of research into graph theory and numerical solution techniques to address issues such as user comprehension and multiplicity of solutions. The proposed solution, Extended Variational Design Technology (VGX), utilizes an innovative Drag and Drop user interaction paradigm to improve comprehension performance, and usability. It is also demonstrated that VGX technology can provide common mathematical foundation to support flexible and integrated product design, assembly and analysis.

Relation between part position and kinematic freedom: An expository survey

“…It requires the designer to specify joint coordinates as well as joint constraints manually. These tasks are error-prone and arduous for the designer [64]. Moreover, this approach completely ignores the geometry of the parts.…”

Efficient adaptive meshing of parametric models

“…Parametric and variational models [23,30] provide the tools for easy modification of the model parameters, based on analysis resuits or design decisions. Recent extensive research makes those models significantly more robust and reliable [28,8]. A testament to the popularity of this representation is the growing number of commercial solid modeling and CAD systems using this representation.…”