Automatic manufacturability evaluation method and system

A designed object workability evaluating system for evaluating quantitatively at a stage of designing an article whether a structure of the article as designed can be realized with easy work in a manufacturing stage for thereby selectively determining a best structure from a plurality of design plans through comparative evaluation thereof, comprising:

• a client machine section including guide information generating means for generating information for guiding operations of a user, input means for allowing the user to input commands and data and display control means for display on a display unit said guide information and results of evaluations performed by said system;
• and
• a server machine section including registering means for registering in storage means evaluation elements defined by the user, storage means for storing information to be used in evaluation processing, index calculating means for calculating indexes indicating degrees of difficulty/easiness of work involved in realizing the evaluation elements already registered in said storage means, evaluation element estimating means for estimating the evaluation elements to be performed on parts comprising an article given by a design plan subjected to evaluation, part workability evaluation means for evaluating ease of work to be performed on the parts, article workability evaluation means for evaluating ease of work involved in realizing said article, and best design plan selection/determination means for selectively determining a best structure on a basis of comparative evaluation of a plurality of design plans;
• wherein said client machine section, said server machine section and a computer-aided design system cooperate to comprise an integral structure of said designed object workability evaluating system.

A designed object workability evaluating method for evaluating quantitatively at a stage of designing an article whether a structure of the article as designed can be realized with easy work in a manufacturing stage with the aid of a computer system, comprising:

• registration processing for registration in the computer system of an evaluation processing for making evaluations as to ease of work to be performed on an article subjected to evaluation, said registration processing including the steps of:
• (I) classifying a plurality of statuses for basic elements of which parts comprising said article that are expected to be subjected to evaluation and inputting though input means at least one value of working costs and working time expected to be involved in the work for processing the part in a standard condition for realizing said basic elements on said part of standard condition together with identification symbols of said basic elements, respectively, while establishing a correspondence between said values and said identification symbols for registration in a storage means;
• (ii) classifying plural kinds of status factors which said parts are expected to have in addition to said basic elements and which influence the working costs and working time involved in realization of the basic elements, respectively, into supplementary elements, classifying each of said supplementary elements into one of more statuses, inputting through said input means at least one value of working costs and working time involved in the work to performed so that the part in said standard condition is formed in statuses of the supplementary elements as classified, respectively, to thereby register said supplementary elements in said storage means together with identification symbols of the supplementary element while establishing correspondences between said values and said symbols, respectively;
• (iii) determining from said registered basic elements one basic element exhibiting a predetermined status serving as a standard of a standard element while determining one of the statuses classified for each of the registered supplementary elements as a supplementary standard;
• (iv) comparing values of working costs or working time of said individual basic elements with reference to a corresponding value of the working cost or working time of said standard element to thereby determine basic elimination scores serving as indexes which indicate a degree of difficulty/easiness of work to be performed on said basic elements, respectively and storing said basic elimination scores while establishing correspondences between said basic elimination scores and the identification symbols, respectively, of the basic individual elements registered in said storage means;
• and
• (v) comparing values of the working costs or working time involved by said classified statuses of said supplementary elements with the corresponding value of the working costs or the working time involved by supplementary standards of said individual supplementary elements to thereby determine supplementary coefficients serving as indexes which indicate the degree of difficulty/easiness of the work involved by the classified statuses of each of said supplementary elements, and storing said supplementary coefficients in said storage means in correspondence with the identification symbols, respectively, of the individual supplementary elements registered in said storage means;
• said processing for evaluating the degree of ease of work on the article subject to evaluation including the steps of:
• (vi) inputting through the input means identification symbols representing said basic element indicating work to be performed on individual parts of said article in a manufacturing stage and said supplementary elements on a part-by-part basis;
• (vii) referencing said storage means on a basis of the identification symbols representing, respectively, the basic elements indicating the works to be performed on the individual parts as inputted and supplementary elements therefor, to thereby read out the corresponding elimination scores and the supplementary coefficients;
• (viii) arithmetically determining on the basis of said basic elimination scores and said supplementary coefficients as read out of those part elimination scores serving as indexes indicating the degree of difficulty/easiness of work to be performed on the individual parts, respectively, by selectively comparing the working cost or the working time of the part standard for the individual parts with the working cost or working time expected to be required by the work to be performed on the individual parts;
• said part standard having one of said standard elements while said supplementary elements each represent a maximum size and a mass, respectively, having sizes corresponding to said parts, respectively;
• (ix) determining part workability evaluation scores representing indexes indicating degrees of ease of the work to be performed on each of the parts by subtracting the value of said part elimination score, respectively, from a predetermined standard value;
• (x) determining arithmetically from said calculated part elimination score and an article elimination score which represents an index indicating degree of difficulty/easiness of works to be performed on the article subjected to evaluation by comparing a working cost or a working time of an article standard corresponding to said article subjected to evaluation with a working cost or a working time of said article subjected to evaluation obtained by totaling at least one of the working costs and the working time for the parts comprising said article subjected to evaluation, respectively;
• said article standard representing a standard for the article subjected to the evaluation which is assumed to comprise a combination of said part standards;
• (xi) determining an article workability evaluation score representing a degree of ease of work to be performed on the article subjected to evaluation by subtracting a value of said article elimination score from a predetermined standard value;
• (xii) outputting at least one of said part workability evaluation score and said article workability evaluation score through a display unit;
• (xiii) determining either a necessity or unnecessity of improvement of the article subjected to evaluation and a most optimal design plan by comparing a magnitude of the article workability evaluation score of the article subjected to evaluation with that of an article workability evaluation score of an alternative determined through a similar procedure.