The following sections of this thesis begin with a review of process planning research that will be of particular use to readers not familiar with the current state of the topic (Chapter 2). After this, the area of solid modeling is reviewed briefly and then the modelling method used in this thesis is reviewed (Chapter 3). There is a subsequent discussion of the rules used for the design (Chapter 4). Next there is a discussion of the AI planning system that applies the rules to produce the process plans (Chapter 5). A short section is presented on operation planning to show how plans are detailed for factory use.
After the background is laid out for the thesis, a set of demonstration examples are given to show the strengths and weaknesses of the approach (Chapter 7). As the thesis concludes, a discussion of problems and future work is presented.