One crucial task of product development is the definition of tolerances to assure the fulfillment of functional and aesthetic requirements. It is extremely difficult to specify the necessary tolerance types and values of products that consist of several manufactured, imperfect components. The defined tolerances interact and can add up their negative effects. This may lead to problems when assembling and positioning the parts. The contribution of this paper is a simulation for the assembly of toleranced parts, based on algorithms for automatic path planning. Goal of the simulation is to check whether the defined tolerances will lead to problems during assembly. Therefore, non-nominal part variants are virtually generated and assembled. Contrary to common methods, the used geometric modeling allows the representation of measure, form and position errors. After introducing the basic path planning approach, several modifications are presented that enable statistic analysis and visualization of the assembly process. In contrast to commonly used tolerance analysis methods, an intuitive examination of toleranced assemblies is made possible in an early stage of the design process.    «

One crucial task of product development is the definition of tolerances to assure the fulfillment of functional and aesthetic requirements. It is extremely difficult to specify the necessary tolerance types and values of products that consist of several manufactured, imperfect components. The defined tolerances interact and can add up their negative effects. This may lead to problems when assembling and positioning the parts. The contribution of this paper is a simulation for the assembly of tol...    »