Development of an intelligent design system for embodiment design of machine tools

Abstract

An intelligent software system which can support efficiently and systematically machine tool design by utilizing design knowledge is described in this paper. The process of embodiment design of a machining center was modelled, represented by IDEFO, and embedded in the system. A hybrid type inference engine has been introduced so that the system can effectively deal with knowledge represented in diversified forms. The design system was developed on the basis of object-oriented programming, and has been coded into one software system which can be ported on Windows NT.