Multimedia tutors for design for manufacturing

Our group at the University of Massachusetts has built design for manufacturing (DFM) computer modules which instruct students on efficient procedures for designing parts for manufacture. The goal is to assist engineering students to gain a deeper understanding of the interaction between features of a part being designed and the corresponding manufacturing requirements of the part in the domains of injection molding and sheet metal stamping. We provide animated sequences of the processes indexed according to the possible designs. The tutors allow students to select a restricted set of parts for manufacture and demonstrate the tooling complexity through both 2D animations and 3D animations. An underlying internal representation of the part being designed provides a non-intrusive critique mechanism to provide feedback to the student.