Feature based integration of CAD and CAPP

Abstract

To integrate CAD systems with other applications in the CIM world, two principal approaches are currently under development. The feature based CAD systems provide higher level primitives which support not only the generation of the drawing but also serve as basic input for other CIM components. Another approach enables any CIM component to recognize the higher level entities used in CAD systems out of a lower level data exchange format, which might be the internal representation of such systems as well as some standard data exchange format. In this paper the authors examine both approaches in more detail. First a conceptual model of CAD and -- as an example of another CIM component -- of CAPP is represented. Comparing these two models the authors investigate the possible integrations on the different levels and provide a concise terminology and advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches.