An Approach to Rapid Manufacturing with Custom Fixturing

We present an approach for automatically generatingcomplete process plans, including fixturing and CNCcode, from high level shape feature part descriptions.The demonstration system is targeted at a broadly usefulclass of machined prismatic parts which includessculpted exterior profiles and features requiring fourand five axis indexing for manufacture. The approachintroduces a set of process plan templates which areschemas for a family of process plans embodying a varietyof fixturing...