Concurrent Engineering: Automation, Tools, and Techniques illustrates how to design products, components or systems, across a range of industries, while taking into account such constraints as the ability to manufacture, reliability requirements, quality, cost and customer needs. In long-awaited, much-needed contrast to other books, which focus on a single aspect, such as managing the design process or product reliability, Concurrent Engineering covers all the aspects of the field. This comprehensive analysis includes in-depth treatment of how the consequences of various technical solutions are assessed in all life-cycle phases of a product; automatic idealization control for analysis performed during concurrent engineering design; an intelligent interactive CAD system which has a mechanism for real-time constraint checking in the design process; conceptual design with physical features and an aspect model integration using a metamodel; automated assembly planning, an important integrative issue in concurrent engineering; the three stages of the design process: system design, parameter design and tolerance design and the methodology for simplification of the design process. In the final chapter, the preliminary design of a light utility helicopter is presented as a case study of how concurrent design can be accomplished by applying ten general characteristics of a concurrent engineering process. Figures, photographs, charts and tables are generously provided throughout to clarify the text and an extensive bibliography is provided for extended study.
