Qualitative and Quantitative Mechanical Assembly Design

We describe a unified approach to computeraided mechanical assembly design in which all design tasks are performed within a single computational paradigm supported by integrated design software . We have developed a prototype design environment for planar assemblies, called HIPAIR, that supports diverse design tasks . We organize the design tasks around the fundamental task of contact, analysis, which we automate by configuration space computation . Configuration space is a complete, concise representation of rigid body interactions that contains the requisite qualitative and quantitative contact information for all design tasks . We describe practical algorithms for the key tasks of dynamical simulation and kinematic tolerancing . HIPAIR allows designers to perform computations that lie outside the scope of previous software and that defy manual analysis . It computes qualitative and quantitative functional changes, allowing designers to study assembly function under a range of operating conditions, to find and correct design flaws, and to evaluate the functional effects of part tolerances . HIPAIR has been tested on hundreds of pairs and on a dozen assemblies . It performs at interactive speed on assemblies of ten parts with tens of thousands of contacts .