Variantentechnologie unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung von Elektrotechnik CAD

Schaefer, Dirk

Abstract

One of the most important approaches to enable cost and time reduction with re-spect to Computer Aided Design for Electrical Engineering (ECAD) is to develop and handle design variants in an efficient manner. After presenting the current state-of-the-art in respect to variational design and ECAD, both fields are considered in relation to each other. The first issue to be addressed is to examine what variational design exactly means in the context of Electrical Engineering CAD. Among other things, herby different types of variants occurring in the field of ECAD are classified. Furthermore, business processes of manufacturers of products with variants are analyzed. Based on these findings, several well known approaches to variational design are analyzed, compared to each other, and finally assessed in respect to their applicability within an ECAD variant module. After that, a new technical approach to variational design in ECAD is devel-oped. It is based on principles of knowledge-based configuration, programming of variants, and parametrics. The idea behind this approach is to automatically generate a complete technical documentation of an electrical installation, and it operates like this: After configuring several components to a new product variant, a script containing commands to create a new project within an arbitrary ECAD system is compiled. The commands in this script are originally expressed in a nonspecific meta language and later on can be automatically translated to a con-crete programming language of a specific ECAD system to be supported. Stored as a file, the related ECAD system can import and process that file to create a real ECAD project. The suggested approach has been realized as a software prototype and its ap-plicability has been demonstrated. Commercially enhanced, the developed variant module would bear a high potential in respect to cost and time reduction in Electrical Engineering Design context.

Citation

Schaefer, D. (2003). Variantentechnologie unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung von Elektrotechnik CAD. Shaker Verlag

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Publication Date: 2003-09
• Deposit Date: Mar 27, 2008
• Series Title: Berichte aus der Informatik.
• Keywords: Informatik, ECAD, CAE, Varianten, Konstruktion, Produktentwicklung, Variantentechnologie.
• Publisher URL: http://www.shaker-online.com/Catalogue/Details.idc?ISBN=3-8322-1901-3