A methodology for a function-to-shape translation tool in foundry
Résumé
Functional design aims at assisting the designer during all the design process, from specifications to manufacturing, even beyond that. One of the key stages of this process is the translation of functions into shapes. In this article, we first study a pragmatic method used to design moulds of foundry. Then, we introduce a theoretical method whose drawback is to generate a too huge solutions space of shapes to be industrially applied. From this comparison, we propose an intermediate approach, called mixed method. It consists in applying the theoretical method by integrating some expert knowledge of the foundry in order to obtain a reasonably wide solutions space automatically.