An Intelligent Design for Manufacturability System for Sheet-metal Parts

A knowledge-based system used for the design of sheet-metal parts is described in this paper. The system is called Sheet Metal Advisor and Rule Tutor (SMAART) and acts as an advisor to engineers designing sheet-metal parts for high volume—low cost production using progressive dies. SMAART uses a commercial object-oriented development environment and has been designed to interface with different CAD systems. It also integrates a feature-based CAD module. When SMAART discovers the violation of a design rule, the engineer is alerted via an advisory window and then has the opportunity to change that part of the design to improve its manufacturability.