Bill Lorensen
Visiting Scientist from GE Corporate R&D
Computer Graphics Lab
Stanford
Have you ever tried to do a simple maintenance job on your car, only to find that to replace a spark plug you had to disassemble much of the engine? If you have, then you probably appreciate cars that are designed for maintainability.
GE Aircraft Engine (GEAE) customers also know the importance of a maintainable engine design. Avoiding flight delays or cancellations often boils down to quickly servicing an engine component. If an engine can be easily maintained, there's a greater chance that a problem can be resolved in a timely manner, and the engine (and plane) can be on its way. This translates into very large savings for airlines.
At GE Corporate Research & Development (GE CRD) we have been working with GEAE maintainability engineers to develop new tools for engine design. These tools take advantage of modern solid-modeling systems, such as CATIA and Unigraphics, and allow us to directly address maintenance issues during the initial design process.
This talk will describe algorithms that create swept volumes and surfaces of parts as they are removed from complex assemblies. It will include additional results of automatic part removal done in conjunction with Stanford's Robotics Lab.