Methods of Transition from a 3D Model to an Ontological Presentation of the Products of Aircraft Technologies

Abstract

Modern aircraft industry focuses, among other things, on reduction of the production costs in accordance with the market demands. Cost reduction can be achieved due to design for manufacturability (DFM) process. DFM practices are aimed to develop products of the same quality, but more cost efficient. This process requires additional knowledge and sufficient experience in selection of the appropriate equipment and technologies for the parts' production. Given the complexity of a modern airplane design (3 million parts for Boeing 767), it's hard to develop the right technology for each part, and, as a consequence, the design engineers often utilize the patterns, which have not changed for decades. The problem is that common practice does not exploit fully the potential of the modern equipment. One of the reasons behind the low automation level in the DFM process is a poor formalization of the DFM process. The authors of this paper did some work for formalization of the DFM process, which resulted in development of an information model, a method of the DFM process and their implementation in DSS, "DFM analysis system". This paper proposes a method for transition from a 3D model to its ontological presentation and describes its usage in the aircraft design process. The problems of the design for manufacturability and design automation are also discussed. The proposed method is aimed to ease the process of the data exchange between important aircraft design phases, namely engineering and design control. The method is also intended to increase the speed of designing and 3D model customizability. The author's plug-in for Siemens NX is based on the method of transition from a 3D model to its ontological presentation and focuses on simplification of the work of the design engineers and technologists.