An intelligent system for integrating process planning and design

The authors present an intelligent manufacturing system that combines design with process planning. For the design stage they have implemented an experimental package that combines boundary representation, CSG, and models of manufacturing features in a simple graphics environment. This package, named XTWIN, was combined with an intelligent process planning system TOLTEC which uses cases of previous process plans stored as dynamic memory structures. This knowledge organization allows TOLTEC to rearrange its memory, thus learning from experience, and to also apply its experience to new cases