Assembly-oriented design offers great potential for product rationalisation, increasing productivity and reducing lead time and cost. It results in simpler and more reliable products which are less expensive to assemble and manufacture. To facilitate assembly-oriented design, an assembly-oriented CAD environment is needed to incorporate Design for Assembly (DFA) evaluation from an early design stage. Assembly planning should also be integrated to support the DFA evaluation. This thesis reports the results of research towards supporting such an assembly-oriented CAD environment. A novel approach has been used to deploy an Expert Assembler to support proactive DFA evaluation and assembly sequence definition. This is particularly useful, as designers are rarely if ever assembly experts. Based on the fact that there are several areas needing expert support in this assembly-oriented CAD environment, but that different areas have very different requirements and different knowledge is involved, the Expert Assembler deployed contains several separated modules. Each module is an expert agent devised to tackle a problem area that uses a suitable problem solving strategy, knowledge representation and reasoning method. This brings a number of advantages that are detailed in the thesis. The thesis presents systematical ideas for support proactive DFA, with the focus on support for part count reduction and assembly sequence generation. This is realised by three elements of the expert agents: Part Count Advisor, Starting Part Advisor, and Next Part Advisor. Part count reduction is usually based on dialogue with the user. There is little computational support for this issue in any of the DFA methodologies and related literature. This research fills the gap: it brings computational support for part count reduction from the early design stage. The work has also made new progress in assembly sequence generation. The Starting Part Advisor and the Next Part Advisor cooperate with each other and with the user to provide suggestions dynamically and transparently regarding base part and the most suitable next part selection in assembly sequence definition. Case studies were used to test the effectiveness of the Advisors.

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 1990. / Thesis Advisor(s): Loomis, Herschel H. Second Reader: Yang, Chyan. "September 1990." Description based on title screen as viewed on December 17, 2009. DTIC Descriptor(s): Scanning, Conversion, Files(Records), Simulation, Methodology, Models, Paths, Very Large Scale Integration, Time, Engineering, Silicon, Vector Analysis, Compilers, Automatic, Faults, Test And Evaluation. DTIC Identifier(s): Computer Aided Design, Circuit Testers, Theses. Author(s) subject terms: Design for testability, VLSI, Genesil Silicon Compiler, Automatic Test Generation, DAS 9100, DV550. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-162). Also available in print.

Report (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. M.S. 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-143). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 1990. / Thesis Advisor(s): Loomis, Herschel H. ; Yang, Chyan. "June 1990." Description based on title screen as viewed on March 23, 2010. DTIC Identifier(s): Pipelines, Computer Aided Design, Compiler, Theses, Multiplication, Digital Systems. Author(s) subject terms: Silicon Compiler, Pipeline, Digital Multiplier. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-211).

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science) Naval Postgraduate School, March 1997. / Thesis advisors, LuQi, Valdis Berzins. Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-324). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-139).

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: Fixture stiffness matrix; Jacobian matrix; kinetic model; geometric model; fixture design verification; stability analysis; tolerance analysis; tolerance assignment. Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-97).

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Truss-like shapes can occur in topology optimization described by an assembly of finite elements or its boundary represented as a polygon mesh. Such shape description does not cover a common engineering parametrization like the lines of a frame structure and its corresponding cross-section. This article addresses the truss-parametrization of such optimization using curve skeletons and Meta Balls. While the curve skeleton is common in the truss-parametrization, including Meta Balls can lead to an overall implicit and smooth shape description.