Patent ID: 9619586
Date: 2017-04-11
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A method for managing a computer aided design model of an object, the method comprising: a processor identifying elements in the computer aided design model; identifying, by the processor, dependencies in the computer aided design model between the elements; generating, by the processor, a matrix of the dependencies, wherein rows and columns of the matrix are the elements, and wherein values in the matrix represent a strength of the dependencies between the elements; using the values in the matrix to identify a number of extraneous elements in the computer aided design model, wherein extraneous elements are defined as having no dependencies leading back to the object; removing the number of extraneous elements in the computer aided design model based on their lack of dependencies to form a modified computer aided design model; using the computer aided design model to identify a number of redundant portions of the elements in the computer aided design model, wherein each redundant portion is a first portion of a first element in the computer aided design model that is identical to a second portion of a second element in the computer aided design model; and consolidating the number of redundant portions identified by modifying at least one of the redundant portions to form the modified computer aided design model; identifying in the elements a set of clusters, wherein clusters in the set of clusters correspond to assemblies of the elements; generating, by the processor, a knowledge model for the object based in part on the values in the matrix, wherein the knowledge model is stored in a knowledge database in a universal format that includes the elements and clusters corresponding to assemblies of the elements, which functions as a source to create, for a particular assembly, computer aided design models for a number of formats; identifying a design process flow for the knowledge model from the matrix, the design process flow identifying an order in which the elements of the computer aided design model were added to the computer aided design model; creating, by the processor, a new computer aided design model of the object using the modified computer aided design model, the matrix and the design process flow; and creating a physical component based on the new computer aided design model of the object; wherein the elements are geometric elements chosen from a group consisting of a solid, a surface, a plane, a point, a curve, a vertex, an edge, and a face; and wherein the elements of the new computer aided design model are ordered in the rows and columns of the matrix in the order identified by the design process flow such that an element in the elements that was most recently added to the computer aided design model is in a row at a top of the matrix.