Research on flowable design techniques

With the deepness of application of 3D CAD system in manufacturing enterprises, more and more consumers demanded to build the information models of their products in CAD system, which not only including the geometrical information of products. So the ideology of flowable design is proposed. The main idea of flowable design consists two aspects: To rearrange the functions and modules of design system in design flow to make the powerful but multifarious modeling ability of CAD system to match a certain industry and improve its usability; To conform design knowledge such as theories, specifications and experiences in CAD systems as well as design experts' notions and measures by the thread of design flow to improve the reuse efficiency of knowledge. To meet the two goals this paper established the theoretical basis of flowable design, research the theory of encapsulating existing feature modeling, parametric design and variational design technologies into design flows, proposed the conception of design flow template and discuss its creation and using methods, and discussed the fusion of design system and design knowledge. Flowable design is proposed as one kind of trial to improve or promote CAD techniques of today.