inserts and the design of different groups of inserts. In addition,
the accuracy of metal stamping products also greatly relies on the
structure of functional insert groups and their assembly. Thus,
the design of inserts is critical to a designer in terms of the de-
sign quality and productivity. This paper first presents a flexible
and complete insert representation scheme using object-oriented
and feature-based methodology. The complex assembly relation-
ships and constraints between inserts and components are then
analyzed. The design automation of inserts using the knowledge-
based approach is introduced. Finally, some results obtained
using the proposed approach are given.
2 Feature-based description of inserts
2.1 Object-oriented design of insert objects
Object-oriented methodology (OOM) is a philosophy that fo-
cuses on objects that form the system with their own internal
states and movement pattern. An object is any distinguishable
component of a system which has a set of attributes that de-
fine its state and a set of methods for manipulating that state,
as shown in Fig. 1 [11, 12]. The objects of a system can be di-
vided into groups where each group share related characteristics.
Each group of objects is called an “object class”. It is the com-
position and interaction of the different objects that form the
system which we want to research and analyze. Object-oriented
methodology has four basic characteristics: data abstraction, en-
capsulation, inheritance and communication by message passing.
The ultimate objective of OOM is application assembly: the
construction of new business solutions fromexisting components.
The components are combined in different ways to meet the new
requirements specified by the user community. Only completely
new functionality will have to be built to complete the solution.Functionally, inserts can be classified as punch insert, die in-
sert, stripper bush, clamping insert, etc. Every category of these
inserts has different function. Based on the different stamping
operations, inserts can be pided into piercing insert, blanking
insert, bending insert, burring insert, embossing insert, etc. For
a complete description of all these inserts, it is necessary to gather
the common features of these inserts so that the design and as-
sembly of these inserts can be easily carried out. From the ex-
tended perspective of insert design, a generic insert is composed
of the following three groups of attributes: (1) drawing-related at-
tributes; (2) fundamental components; and (3) assembly-related
constraint attributes. The schematic representation of insert ob-
jects is shown in Fig. 2. For a drawing-related attribute, it is very
common to include the type ofmaterial, the hardness requirement,
the quantity of this insert, a description, and revision informa-
tion. All this information is very important for automatic drawing
generation and the creation of bill ofmaterials. The component at-
tribute is the core feature in insert configuration. It consists of the
main body of the insert, the shoulder, relief for other components,
screw, ejector and transfer pin, etc.
The body of an insert is composed of a series of 3D geo-
metric features. Three types of geometry relations are defined:
union, subtraction,and side-to. Consider the relations for two
features fa and fb. The union feature fu contains the elements
of fa and fb, while the subtraction feature fs contains only the
elements remaining after removing fb from fa. The side-to rela-
tionship indicates the relationship between a face feature and an
entity feature [13]. The body composition of a coining die insert
is shown in Fig. 3. This die insert consists of base block (body0), 级进模嵌件的自动化设计英文文献和翻译(2):http://www.youerw.com/fanyi/lunwen_13372.html