Automation of trimming die design inspection by zigzag process between AI and CAD domains

Quality control using artificial intelligence (AI) has led to considerable improvements in the manufacturing industry. However, inspection of computer-aided design (CAD) drawing to prevent potential errors is still performed manually by engineers. The design inspection which involves sequential and repetitive processes is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to human error. In this study, we developed an automatic design inspection system for CAD data by integrating AI module and CAD software. The target product of this study is automobile trimming die design. The AI modules replace the engineers’ judgment, and the CAD software performs the operations requested by the AI modules. The design inspection is completed through a zigzag interaction between the AI modules and CAD software by a one-click operation without the intervention of experts. In the zigzag interaction process, 3D CAD files are converted to 2D images for interaction from the CAD software to the AI modules, and the output of the AI modules is transferred to the CAD software through VBA macros. The AI modules are designed to be CAD-independent and data-efficient; therefore, they can be easily adapted to other CAD software and achieve a high performance, even when trained with a few trimming dies. The length measurement error is only 2.4 % on average, which is at the 14th place out of 18 grades according to ISO 286–1:1988 standard tolerance. Additionally, the inspection time is reduced to approximately one-fifth of the manual inspection time by experts.