The current AFR library recognizes a fixed set of features such as holes, slots, pockets, steps, ribs, fillets and chamfers from Boundary representation (B-rep) solid models. It also handles feature interactions of these feature types and generates sufficient information to build a feature tree.
In the current framework, the feature types are fixed. Therefore, it is difficult to define and recognize new feature types. Since the definition of a feature is application-dependent and could be viewed in different manners quite consistently, there is a need for a module that enables recognition of ‘user defined features’ (UDF). The UDF recognition module should provide facilities to define a feature by creating an instance of the same in/over a simple block. The module should then recognize all instances of such a feature that occur in any given part.
