This project will develop and carry out preliminary research in manufacturing fixture design concepts and in manufacturability analysis. In the area of fixture design, the work will be directed both toward development of devices as well as on the incorporation of fixturing considerations into part design. The work will be largely exploratory and conceptual. In the are of manufacturability analysis, the emphasis will be on concepts and algorithms for tolerance analysis, part coding, and feature recognition from computer-aided design data bases for prismatic parts. The goal of the research in this area is to develop analogous concepts for more complicated prismatic parts in solid modeling environments.
