Assembly precedence diagram generation through assembly tiers determination

The extraction of assembly information from product data has been researched for the past three decades, mainly due to the advancements in computer performance and CAD-related software. However, the manipulation and processing of CAD data for the automatic generation of assembly information have only been recently researched. This paper presents a methodology for extracting assembly information from product data. The methodology is based on a novel idea of assembly tiers for the separation of parts to be assembled into groups based on their geometric characteristics. The methodology is applied as a software extension to a commercial CAD software and is demonstrated through a number of industrial case studies.