A rapid design and manufacturing system for product development applications

In recent years, rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT) technologies have been implemented in many aspects of industry, especially in the area of new product development. Based on RP and RT technologies, the paper proposes a rapid design and manufacturing system of the product. There are two ways to develop a new product in this system. One is beginning with a design concept, and another is from a sample as a reference. The reverse engineering technology, transmission processing software or modules of the input data, structure analysis and optimization means and manufacturing process analysis tools were integrated in the system. Some examples show that the integrated system not only can reduce the number of design iterations but also improve the efficiency and reliability of the product design.