Automated machinability checking for CAD/CAM

The authors present a method to determine whether or not a part is machinable on a three-axis milling machine by consideration of tool motion. The method focuses on determining sets of candidate machining directions, called the basis set, and testing if the process plan generated from any particular set of machining directions succeeds in machining all of the part features. This constitutes a machinability test that can be used at design. The range of parts that are successfully handled include all simple polyhedrons and simple three-dimensional curved faces such as cylinders, cones, and spheres