The Development of Gear Pump CAD/CAPP Based on Solid Works

Nowadays, many kinds of software, which have succes sf ully created the integration of CAD, CAPP and CAM, find their disadvantages in p ractical manufacturing. As a result, it is welcomed to develop small CAD/CAPP sy stems on a proper CAD platform, which aim at requirements of factories. Based on the one of the most popular three-dimensional design software SolidWorks, we successfully developed a set of gear pump CAD /CAPP software for Huaiyin Gene ral Factory of Mechanics. 1 The architecture and function of the software According to the need of the enterprises, the general structure of the software contain two subsystems, which are detailed as follows: · The gear pump CAD subsystem contains four main modules, including the optiona l design module of gear pump, module of part design, the module of entity modeli ng and the module of drawing which creates 2 D drawings of parts and assembly c orresponding 3 D modals. · The gear pump CAPP subsystem, which is a combination of creative mode and der ivate mode, also includes four modules, they are the module of access to feature s, the module of planning process route, the module of designing process sheets and the module of generating process documents. 2 The developing environment of the system Basing on Windows 98 and SolidWorks2001 platform, this system creates all functi ons by using Visual C++ 6.0 as developing tools. 3 The keys to the CAD/CAPP integration 3.1 The establishment of product information modal The information of parts is the basis of process planning. In this system, we us e feature modeling to describe the information of parts and assembly of gear pum p, and set up a fundamental basis for the whole system. The information module o f gear pump includes the information of both the assembly and the parts; the par t-describing module uses four-layer structure that is subassembly layer, part layer, feature layer and geometric layer. 3.2 The operation of the information on feature modeling After establishment of information mode of gear pump, the next key problem is ho w to transmit information of product to CAPP subsystem. In order to integrate pe rfectly, connecting CAD with CAPP directly can be a good method. In this system, all information of parts is store in the part drawing files, and the CAPP syste m can load these files to get information. The gear pumps, which are produced by Huaiyin General Factory of Mechanics, are usually belong to several similar typ es, and this means that most products possess large number of similar feature. T herefore, we can easily establish a specific feature for gear pump CAD/CAPP syst em. All parts are created by selecting these features and/or adding few special features. In the module of access to feature of CAPP subsystem, the main task is to find the features and the information will be easily got. 4 Conclusion This system successfully creates gear pump CAD/CAPP integration based on SolidWo rks. 3D CAD software provide more convenient platform for integration and will i nevitably become the mainstream of product design. By developing this system, we clearly realize the promising future of SolidWorks.

Nowadays, many kinds of software, which have succes sf ully created the integration of CAD, CAPP and CAM, find their disadvantages in p ractical manufacturing. As a result, it is welcomed to develop small CAD/CAPP sy stems on a proper CAD platform, which aim at requirements of factories. Based on the one of the most popular three-dimensional design software SolidWorks, we successfully developed a set of gear pump CAD /CAPP software for Huaiyin Gene ral Factory of Mechanics. 1 The architecture and func...