Design for Materials: A New Integrated Approach in Computer Aided Design

Nowadays, the engineering designer defines the structural and the geometrical aspects of the product based on the functional requirements. In the detailed design step, the material corresponding to the product requirements is chosen. In this step, several loops are done in order to adapt the topology and the geometry according to new material specifications. In order to minimize these loops and using the integrated design paradigm, this research proposes a new approach. In this approach, the product geometry and structure are driven by the material specifications with the help of new CAD tools. The combination of insights from functional and material domains builds the theoretical background for this new proposed approach, called Design for Materials. The concept of CAD multi-views skeleton, customized according to the material specifications, is proposed as input of the detailed design. An implementation of this new approach in a CAD system is presented.