JCAD 473

COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
Computer-Aided Design 32 (2000) 191199 www.elsevier.com/locate/cad

Guide surface based tool path generation in 3-axis milling: an extension of the guide plane method
B.H. Kim*, B.K. Choi
CAM Laboratory IE Department, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) 373-1, Kusong-dong, Yusong-gu, Taejon 305 701, South Korea Received 22 December 1998; received in revised form 23 September 1999; accepted 1 October 1999

Abstract Proposed in this paper is a new tool path generation method of 3-axis milling by using the guide surface, which is constructed with the machining region to be cut on the part surface. The guide surface, as an extension of the guide plane, globally takes the shape characteristic of the machining region into consideration well, and plays a key role as a domain space for planning the guide paths. Therefore, the proposed method can handle the region consisting of several trimmed surfaces just like the guide plane method. The nal tool paths are calculated from the cutter contact-paths obtained by projecting the guide tool paths onto the machining region. Unevenly spaced tool paths, the major drawback of using conventional methods, can be also overcome by employing one of the projecting directions proposed. Tool path generation, an example of clean-up machining, is described for explaining the proposed method in detail. Some illustrative examples show the possibility that the method can be applied to the various 3-axis milling operations including high-speed machining. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Tool path generation; Part surface; Machining region; Guide surface; Guide path; Projecting direction; Clean-up machining

1. Introduction Machining is essentially a volume removal process by the relative motion between a cutter and a workpiece. 3-axis milling is the most important machining method in metal cutting industry. In general, 3-axis milling operations can be classied by the dimensionality of the input geometry for tool path generation. Curve machining such as proling or pencil cutting is a 1D operation. In this case, the cutter follows the given curve(s). A 2D operation is to make a planar or curved surface with relatively uniform stock on it. While face milling is to make a planar surface with a face mill, area milling is to make a curved surface with a ball, at or lleted endmill. A typical 3D operation is roughing whose purpose is to remove the volume over the part surface leaving (semi-) nishing stock allowance. In order to create an effective and efcient roughing tool paths, the volume to be cut as well as the part surface should be considered. Area milling is mainly used for semi-nishing or nishing of dies and molds machining, so it quite affects the surface nish of nal part. The performance of area milling can be measured by machining time and surface nish. But,
* Corresponding author. Fax: 82-42-869-8320. E-mail addresses: kbh@bezier.kaist.ac.kr (B.H. Kim), bkchoi@bezier. kaist.ac.kr (B.K. Choi). 0010-4485/00/$ - see front matter PII: S0010-448 5(99)00086-X

the machining time and surface nish are affected from tool path-topology and path-resolution (i.e. path interval and step length) as well as the tool size and shape. By examining the literature on tool path generation and the commercially available CAM systems, tool path generation methods for area milling can be categorized as follows: (1) parametric method; (2) drive surface method; and (3) guide plane method. Parametric method is the computation of the tool paths by moving the points of concern on the parametric domain space onto the part surface. Iso-parametric method, also known as ow-line machining, is the most popular one of this type, and is a very convenient method for a parametric surface patch. The characteristic of the part surface is well reected in the nal tool paths, which can result in raising the machined surface quality. Although many results have been published in this research area, it has been difcult to consistently generate tool paths for the region, consisting of several trimmed surfaces on the part surface [1,2]. In addition, the uneven 3D distance between iso-parametric curves dened on the part surface may cause over-cut machining or under-cut machining [3]. Some recent research papers [46] show the possibility of using space lling curves such as Hilbert curve and Moore curve in NC tool path

2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Part surface (CAD-data)

Machining region determination

Guide surface construction

region to be cut on the part surface can be considered during planning the tool path layout on the guide plane, and it can be also applied to the region consisting of multiple trimmed surfaces. Since the global shape of the region can not be represented by a single curve, it still suffers from the possibility of producing unevenly spaced tool paths like the drive surface method. Guide surface method, as an extension of the guide plane method, is proposed in this paper. The basic idea of the proposed method is that the guide plane is replaced with the guide surface obtained by approximating the region to be cut. Therefore, this approach will combine the advantages of the iso-parametric method and the guide plane method. In other words, by using the approximated surface instead of the plane, the ow line of the region can be reected in the tool paths. This method can also be applied to the region consisting of multiple trimmed surfaces. Especially in 5-axis milling, control surface, which is similar to the concept of the guide surface, has already been employed to determine the milling direction by Golani and Tenne [15]. The next section describes the overall procedure of the guide surface method and each step will be explained in detail in Sections 2.12.5. Some illustrative examples and the concluding remarks are followed in Sections 3 and 4, respectively.

Guide paths plan

Projection the guide paths onto the machining region

CL-paths calculation

NC-code (tool paths)

Fig. 1. Overall procedure of the guide surface method.

generation. Despite some promising results from space lling curve method, to be practically useful, more work on the machine dynamics and the surface nish is yet to be done [5]. Drive surface method is the computation of the tool paths by intersecting curves of the part surface with a series of parallel drive surfaces [7,8]. Typically used for the drive surface is the vertical plane [9,10] (Cartesian method) or the horizontal plane [1113] (contour method). Though this method requires heavy computation for surface surface intersection, it is frequently used for the area milling in molds and dies machining industry because it can handle the complex surface consisting of multiple trimmed surfaces in a seamless manner. One of the major drawbacks of this method is that the tool path interval can be very uneven near the surface portion whose slope is similar to that of the drive surface. Guide plane method is the computation of the tool paths by projecting the 2D tool paths planned on the guide plane onto the part surface. As for the 3-axis milling, the plane perpendicular to the tool axis is mainly used as the guide plane. The tool paths planned on the guide plane can be a set of parallel lines of given direction or a set of curves obtained by offsetting a given curve [14]. Major strength of this method is that the shape of the
cutter used in clean-up machining cutter used in finish machining

2. Guide surface method The main idea of the proposed method is to plan guide paths on the guide surface which globally takes the shape of the regions to be cut into consideration, and to project the guide paths onto the part-surface for generating cutter contact (CC)-paths. In the proposed method, unevenly spaced tool paths, which are described as the major drawback of the three conventional methods, can be overcome by adjusting a projecting direction from the guide tool paths onto the part surface according to the shape of the region. As shown in Fig. 1, the overall procedure of the method is summarized as the following ve steps. Guide_Surface_Method_Procedure Step 1. Machining region determination: to determine the regions to be cut on the part surface according to a given machining purpose. Step 2. Guide surface construction: to construct the guide surface from the region by using an approximation or modeling module. Step 3. Guide path plan: to plan the guide paths on the guide surface according to a pre-determined pathtopology. Step 4. Projecting the guide paths onto the machining region: to project the guide paths onto the machining region according to the projecting direction for generating CC-paths.

clean-up region

part surface

Fig. 2. Clean-up machining.

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part surface

cutter

fillet surface

offset surface

y x two-point contact curve clean-up region clean-up region (b) Detection by filleting operation open strip surface part surface

(a) Detection by two-point contact curves

y x

strip surfaces

closed strip surface part surface

(c) Region classification

Fig. 3. Clean-up machining region detection and classication.

Step 5. CL-paths calculation: to calculate CL-paths from CC-paths without any gouging and interference. For explaining the procedure of the proposed method, clean-up machining tool path generation is used as a typical example in this paper. The clean-up machining regions are special portions of the part surface, which the cutter cannot access during nish machining. As depicted in Fig. 2, clean-up machining is the removal of such uncut regions after the nish machining by using cutters smaller than the nishing cutter. 2.1. Machining region determination Machining region is the region to be cut on the part surface by a single milling operation (with a cutter). Machining region determination is the specication of those regions for archiving a special machining purpose. The methods mainly used in determining the machining regions are user specication and machining feature extraction. In the most commercial CAM systems, the machining regions are determined with users. But it is a hard and time-consuming job to manually specify those machining regions, which are actually made up of several boundary curves on the part surface, because the part surface like a car-body inner panel consists of thousands of trimmed surfaces in practice. On the contrary, the machining feature extraction method is to automatically extract the various machining features that are dened according to the given machining purposes [16]. Many results of machining feature extraction for prismatic parts have been published, but

unfortunately, only a few for sculptured surfaces have been published. The machining region is dened by a set of the boundary, which are usually represented by parametric curve models on the part surface. In constructing the guide surface from the machining region, the model simplication technique [1719] mainly used in computer graphics, which approximates the complex curve or surface model to a simpler one, is often employed. The clean-up machining regions are actually the same as the uncut regions after the nish machining as mentioned in the previous section. The methods generally used in detecting those uncut regions are to trace pairs of two-point cutter contact curves [20] encompassing the regions and to classify the regions whose maximum curvatures are larger than the curvature of the cutter. In the rst method, the two-point contact curves appear during moving the cutter along the whole part surface as depicted in Fig. 3a. The struggling issue of the rst method is to develop a robust algorithm of tracing two-point cutter contact curves on the part surface. In the second method, the classied regions are the sub-portions of the part surface located below the llet surface, which is generated by applying upward and downward offsetting of the part surface sequentially. The key issue of the second method is to generate the offset surface of the part surface systematically, but this issue can be almost resolved by employing C-space approach [2124]. The clean-up machining regions, called complex stripsurfaces, are generally located along concave corner areas as shown in Fig. 3c. For simplication of the tool path

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BC: boundary curve r(u,vj) BC1 vj BC2 (a) Strip-parallel path-topology BC2 (b) Strip-normal path-topology BC1 r(ui,v) ui

BC2 BC2
1 0.5 v

BC1 (c) Spiral path-topology: horizontal-type

BC1

(d) Spiral path-topology: vertical-type

Fig. 4. Path-topologies for the guide tool paths.

generation, those complex strip-surfaces are divided into simple open strip surfaces and simple closed strip surfaces. 2.2. Guide surface construction The guide surface plays a key role as a domain space for planning the guide paths in the proposed method. But it quite affects the tool path quality, so it has to be carefully constructed. In this paper, two criteria are also proposed for constructing a better guide surface as follows: similarity to the machining region and ease of construction. Similarity to the part surface: the more the guide surface is similar to the machining region, the more it takes the shape characteristic of the machining region into consideration. Ease of construction of the guide surface: the more the guide surface is simple, the more the compuational complexity and overhead of its construction reduce. The part surface is a good choice as the guide surface in the rst criterion, while it is a bad one in the second criterion. The xy-plane, which has been mainly used in the guide plane approach, can be a suitable choice in the second criterion, but it can be a poor one in the rst criterion. As a result, there is no optimal guide surface that meets both criteria at once as described above. Therefore, the guide surface has to be carefully selected according to the shape of the machining region. In clean-up machining example, ruled surface [25] as the guide surface is a proper choice because the shape of the clean-up machining region is similar to that of the ruled surface. In the special case that the machining region is a draft surface like a near-vertical wall, the ruled surface, Coons surface, and Gordon surface can be used as the

guide surface because they are simple surface models and globally take the shape of the machining region into consideration well. 2.3. Guide paths plan Tool path generation is to determine the path-resolution and the path-topology in 3-axis milling operation. The pathresolution is geometrically related to the tolerance variables, cusp height and machining tolerance [26] while the pathtopology is intimately related to the milling strategy. Many results have been published in determining the path-resolution and the path-topology, so we do not address this issue in this paper. The guide paths are parametric curves dened on the guide surface according to the pre-determined pathtopology. For example, the jth guide tool-path is a v-constant iso-parametric curve, ru; vj ; for some xed value vj as depicted in Fig. 4a. These constant iso-parametric curves can always be dened in open strip surfaces as well as closed strip surfaces. The path-topology is usually selected according to the machined surface nish and the milling strategy. Shown in Fig. 4 is the path-topology that can be practically used in the strip-type guide surfaces. Especially in clean-up machining, the strip-parallel path-topology in Fig. 4a is preferred to the strip-normal path-topology in Fig. 4b because of reducing the machining time and raising the machined surface quality. As shown in Fig. 4c and d, the spiral path-topology is only dened on the closed strip surface. The main advantages of this path-topology are the ability to cut continuously and to maintain chip-load balance smoothly during cutting. These advantages have made high-speed machining employ the spiral path-topology recently. The horizontal-type spiral

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part surface

guide surface

guide path CC-path

z xy

guide path

CC-path

guide path

CC-path (b) Vertical direction

Fig. 5. Projecting directions.

(a) Normal direction

(c) Horizontal direction

path-topology in Fig. 4c is for gentle slope machining and the vertical-type spiral path-topology in Fig. 4d is for vertical wall machining. For example, the closed ruled-surface is used as the guide-surface for generating a spiral guide tool paths, the guide paths are dened by ru; u for 0 u 1: If given the number of guide paths to be inserted, the guide paths are easily dened by just adjusting parameter values as depicted in Eq. (1). Namely, the n-inserted guide paths are
n j1

ru; vj ; vj

u n

j n

for 0

1 and 1

j 1; 2; ; n: If the guide surface doesnt maintain constant width, the 3D distance between iso-parametric curves will be uneven. A simple solution to resolve this problem is to insert additional parametric curves between iso-parametric curves whose 3D distance is larger than the mean 3D distance. It is not a trivial problem to obtain iso-parametric curves, evenly spaced on the guide surface. More on this problem could be found in Ref. [27]. 2.4. Projecting the guide paths onto part-surface This step is to project the guide paths onto the machining region for determining the CC-paths. The projecting direction in this step is selected according to the shape of the machining region as mentioned in the second section. As
guide surface vertical projection coverage normal projection
xy

shown in Fig. 5, the projecting directions actually used are the following three directions: normal direction, vertical direction and horizontal direction. The normal direction is popular because it can be always used regardless of the shape of the machining region. But it requires more computational overhead because the normal directions of the all guide paths have to be calculated. The remaining two projecting directions are used for special purposes like high-speed machining. The tool paths projected onto the machining region by the vertical direction are sensitive on steep-sloped surfaces like vertical walls, while the tool paths projected by the horizontal direction are more sensitive on gentle-sloped surfaces. Therefore, this paper proposes to use the vertical direction for gentlesloped surfaces and the horizontal direction for steep-sloped surfaces. This paper assumes that the part surface does not contain the undercut region, which is invisible from the top view in 3-axis milling. In order to generate the valid tool paths that cut the entire machining region and take the same milling direction of the guide paths, the following two conditions should be guaranteed. The rst condition is that all locations on the machining region have to be accessed from the guide surface through the projection. If given a projecting direction, the machining region is covered with the guide surface as shown in Fig. 6a. The second condition is that the maximum distance between the guide surface and the machining region should be smaller than the radius of the maximum curvature of the guide surface, which is calculated only at the machining region side. If the distance is larger than the

part surface machining region

distance
[1] [2]

guide surface
[1] [2] [3] [4] [3] [4]

machining region

radius of the maximum curvature (b) distance between guide surface and machining region

coverage (a) Coverage of the guide surface

Fig. 6. Conditions for maintaining the valid tool paths.

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Z-map point

E-map point

E-map grid interval

Z-map grid interval

Grid-edge

Grid-point

Fig. 7. Edge-extended Z-map.

radius of the maximum curvature, the direction of the projected tool paths can be the reverse one of the guide paths as depicted in Fig. 6b. 2.5. CL-paths calculation The last step of the proposed method is to calculate the CL-paths from CC-paths. For example, the CL-point (rcl) of a ball end mill is intuitively calculated from the CC-point (rcc) according to the following equation. rcl rcc

and chuck. But the collision between the workpiece and the moving tool assembly could not be avoided by this operation. So many results published had been focused on this issue mentioned above [24,28].

3. Extension and illustrative examples This paper focuses on not CL-based approach (also called C-space approach), but CC-based approach in tool path generation of 3-axis milling. In order to extend the proposed method to the CL-based approach, the CL-surface is constructed from the part surface rst and the guide surface is also constructed from the machining region determined on the CL-surface. And the nal tool paths are obtained just by projecting the guide paths onto the machining region. The main advantage of the CL-based approach is to systematically detect the collision between the moving tool assembly and the workpiece. The tool assembly C-space, which can freely move without any collision

rn

where r is the radius of the ball-endmill, a is a unit vector called the cutter-axis vector, which is (0,0,1) for a 3-axis milling, and n is the normal vector at the CC-point. The most difcult problem of this step is to generate gouge-free and collision-free CL-paths with the part surface. It can be possible to avoid gouging and interference in each CL-point by employing height boolean operation between a workpiece and a tool assembly including holder

(a) CAD-model of part surface

(b) Z-map model of part surface

(c) Clean-up regions

(d) Clean-up tool paths

Fig. 8. Tool paths example of clean-up machining.

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(a) Part surface and machining region

(b) Generated tool paths

Fig. 9. Tool paths example of vertical-wall machining.

with the workpiece, is constructed prior to generating tool paths. It is guaranteed to generate collision-free tool paths if the tool assembly is located in the C-space. For generating gouge-free and collision-free tool paths, the guide surface method is implemented in the CL-based approach. There are no challenging issues in implementing the proposed method. The digitized model [21,22], which has z-values at regular grids dened on the xy-plane and so-called Z-map, is used to represent the part surface and the CL-surface in the implementation. In order to obtain a high precision digitized model, an edge-extended CL Z-map called CL EZ-map is constructed by additional e-map points on the CL Z-map grid-edges that are located in near-vertical or sharp-corner regions [26] as shown in Fig. 7. And the ruled surface is also used as the guide surface in the illustrative examples. The illustrative examples are tool paths generated by employing the proposed method; clean-up machining tool

paths explained in the previous sections, vertical-wall machining tool paths and high speed machining tool paths. Shown in Fig. 8a is the CAD-model for an inner panel of automobile consisting of 327 trimmed surfaces. The CAD-model is converted to the Z-map model, which is W 430 mm and H 300 mm with a grid-interval of 0.5 mm as shown in Fig. 8b. The clean-up machining regions, which are automatically extracted by using lleting operation on the part surface, are shown in Fig. 8c. Shown in Fig. 8d is the clean-up machining tool paths generated by employing the normal projecting direction. The cutter used in nish machining is a ball-end mill with 30 mm diameter and the cutter used in clean-up machining is a ball-end mill with 10 mm diameter in this example. Shown in Fig. 9a is the part surface for a TV front cabinet consisting of 68 trimmed surfaces, and two curves determining a vertical wall machining region on the CL-surface. The part surface is an EZ-map model, where W 545 mm;

Fig. 10. Tool path examples of high-speed machining.

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B.H. Kim, B.K. Choi / Computer-Aided Design 32 (2000) 191199 [3] Sarma R, Dutta D. The geometry and generation of NC tool paths. Journal of Mechanical Design 1997;119:2538. [4] Cox JJ, et al. Space-lling curves in tool-path applications. ComputerAided Design 1994;26(3):21524. [5] Grifths JG. Toolpath based on Hiberts curve. Computer-Aided Design 1994;26(11):83944. [6] Marshall S, Grifths JG. A survey of cutter path construction techniques for milling machines. International Journal of Production Research 1994;32(12):286177. [7] Faux I, Pratt MJ. Computational geometry for design and manufacture, Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood, 1980. [8] Bobrow JE. NC machine tool path generation from CSG part representations. Computer-Aided Design 1985;17(2):6976. [9] Choi BK, et al. Compound surface modelling and machining. Computer-Aided Design 1988;20(3):12736. [10] Hwang JS. Interference-free toolpath generation in the NC machining of parametric compound surfaces. Computer-Aided Design 1992; 24(12):66776. [11] Dong Z, Li H, Vickers GW. Optimal rough machining of sculptured parts on a CNC milling machine. Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Engineering for Industry 1993;115:42431. [12] Lee YS, Choi BK, Chang TC. Cut distribution and cutter selection for sculptured surface cavity machining. International Journal of Production Research 1992;30(6):144770. [13] Li H, Dong Z, Vickers GW. Optimal toolpath pattern identication for single island, sculptured part rough machining using fuzzy pattern analysis. Computer-Aided Design 1994;26(11):78795. [14] Sescoi, USA. Work NC Reference Manual, 1997. [15] Golani G, Tenne S. Full gouge checking of 5-axis continuous milling. Presented at the IFIP WG5.3 Workshop on Machining Impossible Shapes, Michigan, November 1998. [16] Choi BK, Kim BH, Kim DH. Feature extraction for CAPP of diecavity machining. Presented at the IFIP WG5.2 Workshop on Geometric Modeling in CAD, Ailie, VA, May 1996. [17] Sheffer A, Blacker T, Bercovier M. Clustering: model simplication for meshing using virtual topology. IsraelKorea Bi-national Conference, 1998. [18] Kalvin AD, Taylor RH. Superfaces: polygonal mesh simplication with bounded error. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 1996;May:6477. [19] Hamann B. A data reduction scheme for triangulated surfaces. Computer Aided Geometric Design 1994;11:197214. [20] Marciniak K. Geometric modeling for numerically controlled machining, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. [21] Choi BK, Chung YC, Park JW, Kim DH. Unied CAM-system architecture for die and mould manufacturing. Computer-Aided Design 1994;26(3):23543. [22] Chung YC, Offsetting and blending of Z-map surfaces, MS thesis, IE Department, KAIST, Taejon, Korea, 1991. [23] Choi BK. Surface modeling for CAD/CAM, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1991. [24] Choi BK, Kim DH, Jerard RB. C-space approach to tool-path generation for die and mould machining. Computer-Aided Design 1997; 29(9):65769. [25] Zewang Ni, Zhengxun Liu, Chengye Yu. Intricate ruled surface machining by wire-EDM. Journal of Materials Processing Technology 1991;28:16975. [26] Choi BK, Jerard RB. Sculptured surface machining, London: Chapman & Hall, 1998. [27] Elber G, Cohen E. Toolpath generation for freeform surface models. Computer-Aided Design 1994;26(6):4906. [28] Yun C, Chung JW, Park HYS, Choi BK. Modeling the surface swept by a generalized cutter for NC verication. Computer Aided Design 1998;30(8):58794.

H 504 with a grid-interval of 0.5 mm. Shown in Fig. 9b is the vertical wall machining tool paths generated by horizontal projection. The used cutter is a ball-end mill with 30 mm diameter. Shown in Fig. 10a is the part surface for a shadow mask consisting of smooth surfaces, and two curves determining the machining region like a closed strip-surface. Shown in Fig. 10b is the high speed machining tool paths of the shadow mask generated by using the spiral path-topology and the vertical projection. The part surface for a camera front cabinet and the two curves determining the machining region like a vertical-wall are shown in Fig. 10c. Shown in Fig. 10d is the high speed machining tool path of the camera front cabinet generated by using the spiral path-topology and the horizontal projection. In that case, a CL EZ-map is especially used for guaranteeing machining precision in the vertical walls. 4. Concluding remarks The proposed method introduces the guide surface concept as an extension of the conventional guide plane concept in tool path generation of 3-axis milling. The two criteria, similarity to the machining region and ease of construction of the guide surface, are also proposed for evaluating the guide surface roughly. Unfortunately, there is no optimal guide surface that meets both the criteria at once. The research of identifying suitable guide surfaces for various machining regions will be continued for extending the proposed method. In order to generate the valid tool paths, two conditions: the coverage of the guide surface and the distance between the guide surface and the machining region, are also proposed. In 3-axis milling, the guide paths are dened as isoparametric curves on the guide surface. If the guide surface is constructed from a closed strip-surface, the high speed machining tool paths can be generated by the spiral pathtopology and dedicated projecting direction. In addition, the various projecting directions make the proposed method exible in tool path generation of 3-axis milling. Acknowledgements Discussions with Dr Hayong Shin at the Technology Center of Daimler Chrysler helped clarify several points in the paper. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for valuable comments. References
[1] Loney GC, Ozsoy TM. NC machining of free form surfaces. ComputerAided Design 1987;19(2):859. [2] Sarma R, Dutta D. An integrated system for NC machining of multipatch surface. Computer-Aided Design 1997;29(11):74150.

B.H. Kim, B.K. Choi / Computer-Aided Design 32 (2000) 191199 Bo H. Kim is a post-doctoral researcher in the Computer Technologies Center at Daimler Chrysler. He received a BS from Chunnam National University, and an MS and PhD from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, all in Industrial Engineering. His research interests are in the area of sculptured surface machining, CAPP for die-cavity machining, development of intelligent CAM systems and virtual manufacturing.

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Byoung K. Choi is a professor of Industrial Engineering Department at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; since he joined KAIST in 1983. He received a BS from Seoul National University, an MS from KAIST and a PhD from Purdue University, all in Industrial Engineering. His research interests are in the area of sculptured surface modeling, die-cavity machining, CAPP, system modeling and simulation and virtual manufacturing.