Automatic CAD model retrieval based on engineering document using semantic representation and ontology reasoning

Most of new designs are generally based on previous design so that efficient CAD model retrieval is important issue. For the efficient retrieval, engineering document can be used as input query. There has been several research works related to CAD model retrievals. However, the approaches using engineering documents directly as input are limited. In this paper, we propose the approach of automatic CAD model retrieval with engineering documents. For automatic retrieval, an engineering document with new design information is used as input query and the design information is matched with existing CAD models. In this procedure, semantic representation of new design information and existing CAD models are necessary. Thus, the semantic reference model of domain (SemREM) is firstly defined. Based on the SemREM, the semantic model of CAD model (SemCAD) and semantic model of document (SemDoc) are defined. Then, the semantic processing including ontology reasoning and similarity evaluation are applied to SemCAD and SemDoc. The case study shows the effectiveness of the approach