Abstract
Design-for-manufacturability tools for thin-walled mechanical components are being developed and integrated into a feature-based design system. This paper presents recent work on automatically evaluating injection molded and die cast components for tooling cost. The methodology for evaluation is to convert a design features representation of a component into a tooling cost features representation, then compute cost drivers from the features. Evaluation can be done directly from the cost drivers using cost data in tables. The critical tooling cost features were derived from tooling cost drivers reported in previous work. The tooling cost features and cost drivers are listed, and definitions and algorithms for conversion from design-with to tooling cost features are given. At the end, conclusions are drawn on the feasibility of feature conversion and feature-based tooling cost evaluation, based on the design-with features approach.
