Research Areas

Proactive DFA

Development of a new methodology to facilitate development of efficient product designs and concurrently evaluate product structure and ease of assembly.
Concept Design

Representation of design requirements, generation and selection of concept design alternatives using functional considerations.
Geometric Reasoning

Analysis of CAD models for evaluation of manufacturing complexity and validation of assembly sequences.
Product Complexity Metrics

Complexity metrics for design. Provides the designer with such information throughout the design process so that an efficient design is produced in the first instance.
Expert Systems
Development of "Expert Advisors" to offer assistance to the designer at all stages of design from concept generation to sequence planning.

Research Areas

Research General Overview

The design process supported by present CAD tools tends to be component-oriented rather than dealing with a product as a whole. This leads to redesign, rework and a lengthy product introduction process. Design evaluation tools, such as Design for Assembly (DFA), have demonstrated some success in reducing these problems, but very often these can only be applied once a complete product description is available and hence the potential benefits of early analysis are not realised. Designers would prefer to have such evaluations at a point when they have the most opportunity to act on the results.

The Designers' Sandpit is an EPSRC funded research project that aims to address these issues by developing an environment for "Assembly Oriented Design", incorporating methods for the generation and evaluation of concept design ideas, assembly planning and design advice. The project is a collaborative effort between the Universities of Hull and Cranfield, and a CAD software developer, Radan Computational Limited.