The paper surveys the current state of knowledge of techniques for representing, manipulating and analysing dimensioning and tolerancing data in computer-aided design and manufacturing. The use of solid models and variational geometry, and its implications for the successful integration of CAD and CAM, are discussed. The topics explored so far can be grouped into four categories: (a) the representation of dimensioning and tolerancing (D & T), (b) the synthesis and analysis of D & T, (c) tolerance control, and (d) the implications of D & T in CAM. The paper describes in detail the recent work in each group, and concludes with speculation on a general framework for future research.

This paper discusses the feasibility of applying expert system techniques in solving the problems of automated process planning. The task nature of three well known expert systems are analyzed and compared with that of process planning. Some of the task-dependent issues in expert system implementation, such as representation and constraint are examined.

The feasibility of applying image processing techniques to metal surface inspection is demonstrated. Two methods for metal surface inspection are described. In the first method, the metal surface reflective power and the metal surface normal are related by a random surface scattering model. The metal surface profile can then be computed from the metal surface normal. The second method applies pattern recognition techniques to classify metal surfaces into classes of different roughness. Methods of feature extraction and classification have been tested experimentally and the performances of different types of classifier have been compared. A two-level tree classifier using nonparametric linear classifiers at each node gives better than 90% correct classification on the testing set.