A CAD-linked virtual assembly environment

This paper presents a novel approach to integrate VR and CAD for virtual assembly, namely, CAD linked virtual assembly environment. Compared with most existing VR and CAD integration approaches, the proposed approach is a kind of external integration with a CAD system through automation interfaces. A novel hybrid virtual assembly model is developed in this paper to support this external integration. It works as a combinator that links the precisely represented design dataset in CAD models and the corresponding hierarchically structured virtual assembly dataset in the VR application. With this model, a framework has been developed to embed and apply CAD assembly constraints on the virtual assembly structure. Constraint-based manipulation is then implemented in the virtual assembly environment. Moreover, with this framework, advanced computations, such as runtime DOF determination, disassembly directionality computation, and assembly/disassembly sequence generation, which rely on assembly constraint information, can be feasibly integrated into the virtual assembly application with much less effort. The approach is also more practical in terms of implementation due to two advantages: ( 1) It does not require the implementation of a complicated support for solid modelling in the virtual assembly application. ( 2) A virtual assembly environment can be automatically created and updated from the linked CAD models.