Sheet-Metal Feature Recognition Using STEP: Database for Product Development

Sheet-metal parts are widely used in many engineering fields have different shapes and applications. It consists of small shapes, considered as basic building blocks which are called features. These features are combined to form a part. A sheet-metal part must go through many stages before considering it as the final product. Each stage has its own preferences of considering features set for the study and usages which requires suppression of not-considered features. These suppressed features may be considered in other stages. Sheet-metal features are the bridge to the die design CAD world. Therefore, features recognition from a sheet-metal part model and then smartly suppressing and inserting a feature in the model for product development applications are considered. Features extraction from a part model that is stored in STEP format is presented. Features in a sheet-metal part model are defined as the number, type, and connectivity of geometric entities in the part model. A sheet-metal features database is developed for the process of features recognition, suppression, and insertion in order to be utilized for the product development applications. The developed algorithm for feature recognition and database development is presented along with industrial use case examples.