Archimedes System Overview Archimedes System Overview Archimedes 3.0 is an interactive assembly planning system. The user asks for a plan, simulates it in 3D, adds known process constraints violated by the plan, and then iterates until a satisfactory plan is found.
Special attention is paid to efficiency in every module.
It performs incremental dynamic programming of assembly costs in the graph as the search proceeds. The algorithm is capable of finding an initial plan very quickly, then increasing the quality of the best solution over time, eventually converging on and recognizing the optimal plan when possible. It is specially designed for the demands of searching an extremely large state space that can be highly constrained or unconstrained. The geometric module applies assembly sequencing constraints based on the product CAD data and certain auxiliary data. It employs a method for very fast collision detection developed at Sandia to check operations for validity.