ABSTRACT
Process planning is defined by Chang and Wysk (1985) as the activity which determines the appropriate procedures to transform raw material into a final product. Process planning forms a major portion of the non-machining time in the production of a component thus a great deal of research effort has been applied to the automation of this process. Expert systems are increasingly being used as a tool in this research. The suitability of expert systems for symbolic processing has been greatly utilised and consequently many systems address the problem of machining from a geometric perspective.
