Abstract
A method allowing a systematic generation of assembly plans for mechanical products is presented. It involves a product modelling that includes non-assembly relevant features like labelling, checking, etc. Assembly plans are represented by assembly trees and are produced through interactive software written in PROLOG. An analysis of assembly constraints is also presented with a distinction between operative constraints dealing with the feasibility of the operations involved in the different assembly plans and the strategic constraints dealing with the global structure of the plans. An automatic transformation of the resulting assembly plans into one or several precedence graphs is given as well as a generalization of the classic precedence graphs in precedence hypergraphs able to represent disjunctive precedence conditions.