A feature-based assembly information modeling method for complex products’ 3D assembly design

During the assembly design of complex products, the process data management is disordered and the data expression is not standardized, and depends mainly on the experience of technical personnel resulting in a lack of unified data source, low design efficiency, and low automation. This paper proposes a feature-based assembly information model to address these problem, providing standardized original design data for complex product 3D-assembly design. Taking the geometric feature of the mating faces as the study object, the overall structure of complex products and the information requirements of each assembly design stage were analyzed to construct the assembly feature information model. By focusing on the composition and expression form of information in the assembly feature information model, a geometric feature classification criterion applicable to assembly design is presented, and the matching rules of feature pairs, assembly relationship, and assembly constraint instructions are established. Based on these, assembly design information is extracted and expressed in a standardized form. As a validation, the modeling method was conducted on a marine diesel engine cylinder cap as a case study; the performance and applicability of the established rules and the extraction and expression methods were verified through the comparison with the assembly process of the cylinder cap.