Abstract
Fixture Planning (FP) is an important manufacturing activity that has a significant effect on product quality and productivity. FP not only determines the locating scheme to restrict the Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) of work-piece but also locating and clamping datum for final fixture assembly. In this paper, an intelligent fixture planning methodology is proposed. The part geometric data base and process/setup plan is taken as input to an intelligent FP system. At first, a rule based method is developed to determine the correct locating scheme that constraints all DOF of work-piece. Then, the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is applied to determine feasible locating and clamping faces. The methodology is also validated with an illustrative case study.