system for assisting in the determination of geometric similarity between machined cylindrical parts

The costs associated with the design and manufacture of machined components can be significantly reduced by the ability to identify and group similar parts. This activity is generally accomplished by assigning each part a Group Technology code number based on its most significant characteristics. Attempts to accomplish this are hindered by: the relatively small amount of information that can be encoded in a code of manageable length, inconsistencies in human interpretation of design and manufacturing data, the commitment of resources required to review and encode all candidate components at a facility, and the heuristic nature of determining what constitutes significant similarity for any particular application. These problems are addressed by the development of a system that assists in the determination of similarity by comparing CAD (Computer Aided Design) files, rather than Group Technology codes, in a manufacturing oriented frame-based system.