A method for common design structure discovery in assembly models using information from multiple sources

Purpose Design is a time-consuming process for mechanical production. Some design structures frequently occur in different products and can be shared by multiple assembly models. Thus, identifying these structures and adding them to a design knowledge library significantly speed up the design process. Most studies addressing this issue have traditionally focused on part models and have not extended to assembly models. This paper aims to find a method for common design structure discovery in assembly models. Design/methodology/approach Computer-aided design models have a great deal of valuable information defined by different designers in the design stages, especially the assembly models, which are actually carriers of information from multiple sources. In this paper, an approach for discovering a common design structure in assembly models is proposed by comparing information from multiple sources. Assembly models are first represented as attribute connection graphs (ACGs), in which we mainly consider topological information and various attributes of parts and connections. Then, we apply a K-means clustering method based on a similarity analysis of different attributes to classify the parts and connections and transform ACGs of assemblies into type code graphs (TCGs). After this, a discovery algorithm that improves upon fast frequent subgraph mining is used to identify common design structures in assemblies. Findings A new method was developed for discovering common design structures in assembly models, considering the similarity of information from multiple sources and allowing some differences in the details to keep both commonalities and individualities of common design structures. Practical implications Experiments show that the proposed method is efficient and can produce a reasonable result. Originality/value This discovery method helps designers find common design structures from different assembly models and shorten the design cycle. It is an effective approach to build a knowledge library for product design that can shorten the design cycle.