An artificial intelligence planning approach to manufacturing feature recognition

Within manufacturing, features have been widely accepted as useful concepts, and in particular they are used as an interface between CAD and CAPP systems. Previous research on feature recognition focus on the issues of intersecting features andmultiple interpretations, but do not address the problem of custom features representation. Representation of features is an important aspect for making feature recognition more applicable in practice. In this paper a hybrid procedural and knowledge-based approach based on artificial intelligence planning is presented, which addresses both classic feature interpretation and also feature representation problems. STEP designs are presented as case studies in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.