An integrated information system for electronic manufacture

Described in this paper is a fully integrated design-to-manufacture information system. The first part of the paper deals with the automatic conversion of design data into data directly useable in manufacture. This is followed by a description of the data distribution system used to convey information from design to manufacture. Software has been developed to interrogate the CAD model, and to make all the decisions necessary to generate NC programs for the following manufacturing processes: piercing of metal sheets prior to bending, turning and milling, drilling and profiling printed circuit boards, and automatic insertion of components into printed boards. This software runs automatically, without any human intervention, often on unattended overnight batch processing