An expert system for process planning of prismatic workpieces

Process plans have considerable significance in industrial prodution as a prerequisite for the economical manufacture of workpieces. The demand for greater relevance and planning quality through consideration of numerous peripheral factors has led to an increase in the effort and complexity involved in these process plans. The article describes a new attempt at generating process plans for prismatic workpieces which aims at providing a complete process and function chain. It shows the automatic transfer of geometric data from the CAD system into the expert system and a concept which, by forming elementary processing operations, takes account for the first time of the actual work content even when planning and optimizing the use of media.