Design and implementation of an integrated surface texture information system for design, manufacture and measurement

The optimized design and reliable measurement of surface texture are essential to guarantee the functional performance of a geometric product. Current support tools are however often limited in functionality, integrity and efficiency. In this paper, an integrated surface texture information system for design, manufacture and measurement, called "CatSurf", has been designed and developed, which aims to facilitate rapid and flexible manufacturing requirements. A category theory based knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation mechanism has been devised to retrieve and organize knowledge from various Geometrical Product Specifications (GPS) documents in surface texture. Two modules (for profile and areal surface texture) each with five components are developed in the CatSurf. It also focuses on integrating the surface texture information into a Computer-aided Technology (CAx) framework. Two test cases demonstrate design process of specifications for the profile and areal surface texture in AutoCAD and SolidWorks environments respectively.