Using Constraint Programming to Simplify the Task of Specifying DFX Guidelines
Marc van Dongen, Barry O’Sullivan, James Bowen, Alex Ferguson, Mike Baggaley · 1999
Increasingly, it is being realised that success in manufacturing requires integration between the various phases of the product life cycle. One of the key aspects of this integration is that, during the design of an artifact, due consideration should be given to facilitating the down-stream phases of the life-cycle. This is frequently known as "Design for X" (or DFX), where the X ranges over such issues as manufacturability, servicability and so on. Vendors of leading CAD software have started to incorporate DFX features into their packages. In addition, vendors have discovered from customer feedback that engineering companies require flexibility as well as functionality: companies which use CAD packages want to specify their own DFX guidelines as well as, or even instead of, relying on standard DFX guidelines supplied by the CAD vendors. If engineers from user companies are to augment CAD packages with companyspecific guidelines, it is important that a language be provided...