A tool-centric approach to designing composable feature recognizers

Because parts are manufactured with a variety of processes, we would like feature recognizers that can support planning within these various manufacturing domains. These manufacturing domains often share common properties, such as similar tools and process capabilities. This raises the question of whether or not feature recognizers can be designed to take advantage of the similarities among these manufacturing domains. In particular, I explore the possibility of designing composable feature recognizers that can be created by using and/or adapting components from existing feature recognizers for related domains. This approach provides an alternative to other approaches including 1) developing a single, large feature recognizer for several domains and 2) developing a new feature recognizer from scratch for each domain. Composable feature recognizers will be smaller and easier to write than the feature recognizers from the first approach since they will be tailored for a smaller family o...