Multi-criteria similarity assessment for CAD assembly models retrieval

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TitleMulti-criteria similarity assessment for CAD assembly models retrieval
Publication TypeReport Series
Year of Publication2018
AuthorsLupinetti K., Giannini F., Monti M., Pernot J.
SeriesIMATI Report Series
Number18-07
Pagination21
Date Published08/2018
Place PublishedGenova
PublisherCNR-IMATI
Type of WorkPreprint
Abstract

The use of Digital Mock-Up (DMU) has become mainstream to support the engineering activities all along the Product Design Process. Over the years, companies generated large databases containing digital models and documents related to their products. For instance, considering complex products, the DMU can be composed of several hundred thousand parts assembled together in assembly trees containing tens of sub-assemblies, and representing several terabytes of data. The ability to retrieve existing models is crucial for the competitiveness of companies, as it can help to leverage existing solutions, results and knowledge associated with previous products. To speed up the access to this large amount of reusable information, CAD models search approaches have been proposed, and notably the so-called content-based search techniques which help designers exploiting the implicit knowledge embedded in the models. As part of a system for the retrieval of CAD assembly models, this paper introduces a set of four measures to evaluate assembly similarities according to multiple criteria. These measures are combined to assess three different levels of similarity (local, partial and global). The local measure only considers the contribution of similar parts, while partial and global measures take also into account the number of similar parts compared to the total number of parts in the query and in the target model. Moreover, an ad-hoc visualization interface has been designed to clearly highlight the different similarities and to allow a fast identification of the target models. The validation of the proposed measures is discussed through several academic and industrial examples run on the developed prototype software.

Keywords3D assembly model retrieval, Assembly similarity evaluation, Multiple similarity criteria, Partial and local similarity
URIhttp://irs.imati.cnr.it/reports/irs18-07
Citation Keyirs18-07