This paper addresses the issue of integrating design and manufacturing by describing a Concurrent Engineering system called Dicast that has been developed to assist designers with the detailed design of castings. Design is viewed as a constraint driven activity where designers negotiate solutions to the design based on dynamically evaluating constraints. In this way, the design process can be modeled as variables that represent design parameters interconnected with constraints. Advice is given to the designer when constraints are violated.
concurrent engineering; design for manufacturing; constraint logic programming; design support systems
