Holding the work piece for machining, forming, assembly, or inspection operations is a universally encountered problem in the manufacturing world. The apparatus used to accomplish this is a fixture. Using efficient fixtures is a good way of improving the throughputs of the processes by reducing the part setup time, which can be defined as locating the part in the desired position in a safe way to allow machining. Identification of design requirements, fixture analysis and fixture synthesis can be named as the phases of computer aided fixture design. Typical fixture design systems focus on one of these phases, as the knowledge representation requirements differ for each stage. This paper discusses these phases with respect to the general manufacturing scheme and identifies the issues on integration in order to have a successful variant approach to the fixture selection problem. A system architecture is discussed that is based upon the new graph-based integrated fixture representation. This system architecture should facilitate the rapid exploration of existing fixtures and fixture assemblies to find suitable matches for new part manufacture.
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