Abstract: The history of the gear drive and development of the gear industry is briefy reviewed. The development and application status of gear technology is more systematically introduced in recent years, focuses on three study aspects of gear tooth figure and transmission structure, application of some new theories, and development and application of computer software. Gear tooth profile, performance, tooth correction and transmission structure are researched in the part of gear tooth figure. The current combined application such as fractal theory and elastic fluid theory is mainly introduced. Computer research of gear develops rapidly and application and development of the domestic situation is briefly combed from computer-aided design, analysis, testing and manufacturing processes perspective. Standards and testing issues need to be addressed in the gear research, knowledge to solidify and marketing problems are required to solve in the new theory application, and knowledge mining and generalized problem need to be solved in the computer software applications are proposed and related solutions are given.

Key words: Development and application of computer software, Gear, Gear transmission structure, Theory, Tooth figure