Abstract
Mechanical system conceptual design, sometimes termed mechanical system scheme design or preliminary mechanical system design, is the key link of mechanical system design, and also the bottleneck of integrated CAD / CAM [1][2][3]. Therefore, it is important to automize this part of work to promote the quality of mechanical system design and the extent of product design automation.
This paper will discuss in detail a problem-solving strategy for mechanical system conceptual design — QUINT. It devides the conceptual design into five stages: (1) environment ▸ function; (2) function ▸ structure; (3) structure ▸ parameters; (4) parameters ▸ analysis; (5) analysis ▸ evaluation and decision. QUINT has already been successfully applied in CDESTOOL (Conceptual Design Expert System TOOL). With this tool, three practical systems have been developed: industrial turbine general scheme design expert system (TDES), wheel loader general scheme design expert system (WLDES), and milling-boring machining center scheme design expert system (MDES). The result is fairly satisfactory.
