AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION OF CYLINDRICAL/TAPERED FEATURES FROM PRISMATIC COMPONENTS

Automatic identification of different feature from a CAD solid model for downstream applications like process planning and NC program, greatly contribute to the level of integration. Different data exchange standards like IGES, DXF, PDES and STEP standards plays an important role to transfer the geometric data between CAD, CAE and CAM. Among those, the STEP standard comprises both geometric and technological information including geometry, topology, features, tolerances, surface roughness and material necessary to completely define a component. For that reason this paper proposes automatic recognition of different cylindrical/taper features using STEP file. The methodology proposed in this work includes development of an algorithm for identifying different cylindrical/taper features like cylindrical holes, taper holes, cylindrical protrusions, taper protrusions and stepped holes in prismatic parts modeled in any CAD software having the STEP out put file extension. A generalized JAVA program is used to implement the algorithm. Finally this paper also presents the implementation of the above algorithm for different example parts to demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology.