Abstract: Aiming at difficult sorting and retrieving complicat- ed structure parts in part lib, a method for part design by using conceptual part structure qualitative models is presented. Bond surfaces and function surfaces are abstracted as assembly meta symbols and function meta symbols respectively, link meta symbols make the assembly meta symbols and the function meta symbols in the part connect and express the configuration of part structure. By abstracting of relative position, orientation and topology relation between part function surfaces as a qualitative symbol set, the conceptual part structure qualitative models are presented. The calculation methods of conceptual part structure similar degree are discussed. On the basis of referring to the algorithms of retrieving compound in chemical database, the similar part retrieval mechanisms of structure graph matching and structure graph similarity are presented. The method is validated by taking reducer boxes as example.

Key words: Design reuse, Part design lib, Similar part retrieval