Integrated modeling with Top-Down approach in subsidiary industries

Abstract

This article considers how conceptual design of industrial products is supported by current CAD systems. The case of subsidiary industries, or first tier suppliers, that must simultaneously deal with different customers and CAD platforms, receive special attention. Conceptual design is critical, since the large variety of fundamental product data managed (not just geometry) would be specified, modeled and interrelated (i.e. functional relations), to both simplify and ensure correctness and efficiency of the next design phases of current design, and make them easy to reuse, modify and redesign in the future. We give an approach to introduce conceptual design through top-down methodology and integrate it with final geometry. In this context, and in order to help subsidiary industries to improve their model quality, we propose the elaboration of product-oriented modeling guidelines, or “best modeling practices”, instead of CAD-oriented modeling guidelines. The approach has been validated by testing the conceptual design tools of two commercial high-end CAD systems at use in many subsidiary automotive industries.