The design of sheet metal components is perhaps one of the more
challenging concurrent activities for design and manufacturing
engineers. To aid this design process, a method is developed to
encapsulate the constraints of sheet metal that make designing such
components a tedious and iterative procedure. This project involves the
implementation and testing of a geometric representation scheme for
building feasible sheet metal components through the use of 17 grammar
rules that capture manufacturing operations like cutting and bending.
The implemented system has benefits both as a user interaction tool and
as the basis for a computational design synthesis approach for
designing sheet metal components. An example of a constructed sheet
metal component is shown along with the method for invoking the sheet
metal grammar to create this component.