Methods engineering: Using rapid prototype and virtual reality techniques

A survey of virtual prototyping techniques for mechanical product development

“…Seamless integration of CAD with methods engineering [76] and other human factor analysis tools is available commercially. However, automatic and speedy correction of design faults after performing such analysis requires customization of the OTS software.…”

Research on virtual human in ergonomic simulation

“…It brings ergonomics to a practicable stage, especially in rehabilitation aids design (Beitler, Harwin, & Mahoney, 1996), aerospace product design (Bennett, 1996) and workplace task ergonomics analysis (Rajan, Kadiresan, & Jeffrey, 1999). With the development of supercomputing, computer graphics, virtual reality and high performance graphics system, the research on ergonomics is extended to virtual environment design platform that is based on 3D-graphics, interactive, physics-based model, and provides realtime simulation and evaluation (Arzi, 1997). In virtual assembly (Rajan et al, 1999), pipeline design (de Sa & Zachmann, 1999), virtual training (Stuering & Schumann, 1999), verification of maintenance processes and others, it has been applied and incorporated in the framework of virtual prototype development.…”

The ergonomic design of workstations using virtual manufacturing and response surface methodology

“…The ®rst deals with more technical aspects of anthropometric modeling and simulation of human movement (Zhang and Chan, 1997;Chan, 1997;Zhang et al, 1998). The other domain deals with the development of methodology set to exploit the emerging technologies in design applications such as CAD, Rapid Prototyping and Virtual Reality (Nayar, 1995;Braun et al, 1996;Arzi, 1997;Waly and Sistler, 1999).…”

“…Therefore, their method focused on ®nding a good solution relative to both measures rather then ®nding a strict optimal solution. Arzi (1997) suggested the integration of more advanced technology in the design process. Technology capable of eectively simulating human movement, rapidly generating workstation prototypes and allowing designers to virtually``step in'' to the computer model and examine it using Virtual Reality (VR).…”

“…In this paper, we follow the work of Nayar (1995), Braun et al (1996), and Arzi (1997) by exploiting computerized applications for the design of manual workstations. In order to overcome the de®ciencies pointed out by Zha et al (1998), we suggest a systematic design heuristic based on Fractional Experiments (FE) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM).…”