Custom-cut: a Customizable Feature Recognizer

The tools and processes available in a given shop greatly innuence the way in which manufacturers view a part and the way in which they decompose it into machinable volumes, or features. Likewise, a feature recognizer should be able to produce a diierent feature decomposition when diierent tools are available. Additionally, it should be easy for a user to add new tool descriptions to the system in order to maintain and customize the feature recognizer. We address this challenge in two parts. First, we present an extensible representation which allows users to easily add their own custom tool descriptions to a feature recognizer's knowledge base. Second, we present CUSTOM-CUT, a tool-based, resource-adaptive feature recognizer. CUSTOM-CUT accepts the user-deened cutting tools as input and automatically identiies the areas of the part that can be cut using the custom tools. We call CUSTOM-CUT resource-adaptive because the features it identiies will be diierent if it is given diierent cutting tools. The advantages of this is that it is easier for the user to maintain and customize and provides greater assurance that the features identiies are actually machinable with the given set of equipment.