Automatic extraction of mechanical interlocking features from CAD model

Abstract

This paper represents, classifies, and automatic extracts the mechanical interlocking features
(MIFs) from the CAD model. Mechanical interlocking features (MIFs) are geometric features of
two or more components when physically interlock that prevent the relative movement in any or
certain directions. A set of contact faces in proximity and their characteristic arrangement are used
to represent the MIFs. This characteristics arrangement of contact faces and their topological
relationships help in classification of MIFs. It is very difficult to manually extract the large number
of MIFs from CAD models. It is therefore desirable to develop a set of algorithms to extract the
MIFs from CAD model. CAD assembly models from industrial domain has been used in order to
validate the proposed approach.