Semi-automatic generation of assembly instructions for open source hardware
Publication date
2023-08-14
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
Project
INTERFACER
Publisher
Ubiquity Press
Series or journal
Journal of Open Hardware
ISSN
Periodical volume
7
Periodical issue
1
First page
1
Last page
18
Article ID
6
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
Keyword
Open source hardware
OSH
Documentation
Assembly manual
Assembly instructions
FreeCAD
Automation
Abstract
Documentation is an essential component of Open Source Hardware (OSH) projects both for co-development and replication of designs. However, creating documentation and keeping it up-to-date is often challenging and time-intensive. There are several systems that focus on this documentation challenge but they are limited in their support for keeping documentation up-to-date and relating CAD designs to documentation. This article proposes a semi-automated solution that relates the CAD design semantically to a textual specification from which we generate assembly instructions semi-automatically. Our system contains a CAD plugin and a compiler for the textual specification with which we show that we can replicate a state-of-the-art assembly manual to a high degree, that we can automate significant parts of the documentation process, and that our system can effectively adapt to documentation changes as a result of evolving designs. Our system leads to a methodology that we name “CAD-coupled documentation” integrating CAD design with the documentation process.
Description
Section: Issues in Open Hardware
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Cite as
Mariscal-Melgar, JC, Hijma, P, Moritz, M and Redlich, T. 2023. Semi-Automatic Generation of Assembly Instructions for Open Source Hardware. Journal of Open Hardware, 7(1): 6, pp. 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joh.56
Version
Published version
Access right on openHSU
Metadata only access