Automated design process modelling and analysis using immersive virtual reality.pdf

Computer-Aided Design 41 (2009) 1082–1094Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computer-Aided Design journal homepage: /locate/cad Automated design process modelling and analysis using immersive virtual reality Raymond C.W. Sung a,?, James M. Ritchie a, Graham Robinson a, Philip N. Day a, J.R. Corney b,1, Theodore Lim a a Scottish Manufacturing Institute, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK b University of Strathclyde, Design, Manufacture Engineering Management, 502b James Weir Building, UK a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 23 July 2008 Accepted 29 September 2009 Keywords: Virtual reality Design task analysis Cable harness design User logging Design rationale and knowledge capture a b s t r a c t The capture of engineering design processes and associated knowledge has traditionally been extremely difficult due to the high overhead associatedwith current intrusive and time-consumingmanualmethods used in industry, usually involving interruption of the designer during the design task and relying on them to remember how a design solution was developed after the event. This paper presents novel research which demonstrates how the detailed logging and analysis of an individual designer’s actions in a cable harness virtual reality (VR) design and manufacturing system permits automated design task analysis with process mapping. Based on prior research, which utilised user-logging to automatically analyse design activities and generate assembly plans, this work involves the automatic capture of extracted design knowledge embedded within the log files and subsequently represented using IDEF0 diagrams, DRed graphs, PSL, XML, annotatedmovie clips and storyboard representations. Using this design knowledge, an online help system has been demonstrated which helps users to carry out design tasks similar to those performed previously by expert users. This is triggered by monitoring the designer’s actions and functions in real time and pushes knowledge