Where Does CAM Stand? Researchers are pushing to get more manufacturing assistance from the computer

摘要

You've just wrapped up your part design and you've certainly earned a break. But don't shut down your computer just yet. You may not be through. Depending on which computer-aided design system you use, you might need to translate your design data into an open format like STEP or IGES before sending it on to the computer-aided manufacturing system. There's a good chance that your company's CAM system might not speak your CAD system's native language. Even when CAD and CAM are compatible and you get to skip this step, you're likely to get some questions from the manufacturing floor as engineers there determine how to best transfer information from CAM to the machine tools that will manufacture the part. There's even a possibility that you've designed your part in such a way that it can't actually be manufactured - or, at least, manufactured easily or at low cost. Your CAD system hadn't alerted you to that, had it? These are some of the issues in CAD and CAM compatibility today, according to Satyandra Gupta, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Maryland in College Park. Gupta's university profile lists his research interests as "geometric reasoning algorithms for computer aided manufacturing; integrated product/process design decision models."