Representation for Assembly Constraints with Mating Feature Vector Transformation

Assemblies involving geometric structural and spatial relationships between individual parts provide a higher level representation in abstraction than single parts. The mating features of the assembly components are analyzed. The relative orientation and location of the assembly components are determined by the transformation of the assembly feature vector. The alignment, angle, distance mating condition between two planes, fit mating condition between two cylindrical faces, and alignment mating condition between two conical faces of the assembly components are discussed and classified. A uniform representation method for the rotation matrix and translation matrix is provided. This method can also work on the situation that the assembly features are leaned to the axes of the global coordinate system. Some examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the method in the end.