Maintainability Analysis Visualization System and Its Development in AutoCAD Environment

Maintainability is an important design characterist ic , and also is a design parameter. The essence of maintainability design is to ex pect and solve possible maintenance problems at early stage during product devel opment, maintainability must be designed into product simultaneously. But curren t maintainability methods do not support concurrent engineering. This paper anal yzes the deficiencies of existing maintainability technologies, and introduces t he concept of maintainability analysis visualization. The two major deficiencies are that maintainability analysis time lags behind product design, and the main tainability techniques do not accommodate modern product design concepts. After this, the infrastructure of maintainability analysis visualization system is dis cussed. The system are composed of four subsystems, they are product modeling, d isassembly process modeling, simulation and analysis, and user interface. Produc t modeling is accomplished with the capability of CAD system, disassembly proces s modeling is mainly a reason process based on assembly information. The system is integrated into AutoCAD so that designer can timely analyze their product des ign from the viewpoint of easy maintenance. Human model generation function, hum an task analysis function, tool analysis function, visibility analysis function is implemented, disassembly process planning function is still under developing.

Maintainability is an important design characterist ic , and also is a design parameter. The essence of maintainability design is to ex pect and solve possible maintenance problems at early stage during product devel opment, maintainability must be designed into product simultaneously. But curren t maintainability methods do not support concurrent engineering. This paper anal yzes the deficiencies of existing maintainability technologies, and introduces t he concept of maintainability analysis visualization...