System Configuration in Design Automation

Abstract: Some companies have managed to gain an advantage in today’s increasingly competitive market by utilizing product configuration software. However, many companies in the industrial manufacturing industry offer systems of configurable products and wish to be able to configure the products both individually and together as a system. The project described in this thesis was carried out at Tacton Systems, a provider of sales and product configuration software. This project aims to contribute to the literature knowledge on system configuration by researching, through literature study and interviews, what types of systems companies want to be able to configure, and what relationships or interfaces are needed between the configurable modules forming the system. The result was that it is possible to look at each system in levels of abstraction. When looking at whole systems, the system structures can be split into two types, i.e., linear systems and central systems. Parameters need to be communicated between the modules in the system. The module interfaces defined in the Tactonmodel could carry enough information to establish the necessary relationships between the modules and thus make different parameter types irrelevant. Furthermore, this project investigates different aspects of how Computer AidedDesign (CAD) models for system configuration in Solid Works need to be structured to work in a robust way for design automation. Different functions were tried on a relatively simple model as a proof of concept. The main result is that the most robust way to do the mates between the configurable components is to assign them to reference geometry that is built into templates. This project focused on investigating the possibility for system configuration in the design automation environment, but it is necessary for Tacton to look at the future development in a holistic view.