ABSTRACT
Feature recognition can be defined as a process utilized to identify the manufacturing features of the part using its solid model [1]. It plays a significant role in a number of engineering applications and serves as an important support tool for the integrated manufacturing [2]. It aids to accomplish the interface between the CAD and computer aided process planning (CAPP) systems. It is one of the first and the most important steps to carry out the integration of the CAD, CAM, and computer aided inspection (CAI) systems. The main purpose of the feature recognition is to provide a direct link between the CAD and CAM systems so that the integrated productivity of CAD/CAM systems can be improved [3]. The feature recognition can be described as a technique in which a set of rules is applied to extract high-level semantic information from the part model. It consists of three main steps [4]:
1. Feature definition: In this step, the set of rules is defined for the given feature.
