Coordinator: a robust setup planner that detects fixture-feature interactions

This paper presents Coordinator, a robust, resource adaptive process planner for CNC machining centers that uses a blend of geometric and manufacturing information to detect a broad variety of manufacturing interactions and create setups plans. This system is designed to be used by expert users to reduce the time and effort required to produce good plans. One of Coordinator's contributions is the ability to detect fixture-feature interactions, interferences between manufacturing operations in which one operation destroys the clamping surfaces required by another. These are an important class of interactions, which have a major (if not the major) impact on ordering setup plans. However, they are rarely addressed in the literature, mainly because traditional process planning organizations do not compute the information required to detect them at the right time. Fixturing information, which is needed for identifying feature-fixture interactions, is usually computed after all plan sequencing has been done. Coordinator is part of a large system, MAPP, which reorganized the tasks in process planning by computing the required abstract fixturing information prior to sequencing so that Coordinator can detect a wide variety of interaction types, including feature-fixture interactions. Coordinator represents an important advance in making practical, robust, and flexible manufacturing planners.