An Interactive CAPP Kernel Based on a Blackboard System Architecture

This paper describes the ideas and developments that lead to a new Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) approach : a blackboard-style, interactive CAPP system, in which the human process planner is assisted by expert modules, each capable of performing a process planning task. At all times, the human operator has full control over all planning activities. An important reasoning mechanism, that is inevitably linked with the interactive CAPP kernel, is opportunistic process planning. The implementation of this mechanism in an automatic feature based CAPP system will also be elaborated in this paper.