Abstract#R##N##R##N#Assembly illustrations are drawn usually in an assembly manual to show assembly information because, in many cases, instructions cannot show assembly information unambiguously enough. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the assembly information both from instructions and illustrations so that unambiguous assembly information is obtained finally. Naturally, it becomes necessary to construct a cooperative system for image understanding and language understanding. For such a final purpose, the purpose of this study is to obtain assembly information only from illustrations by means of image understanding.#R##N##R##N##R##N##R##N#This paper presents an approach for obtaining assembly information from illustrations. As an example, the approach takes an auxiliary line employed to show an assembly relation between two certain mechanical parts. By extracting auxiliary lines and using the information on the location and orientation of these lines, we can recognize not only the assembly relations but also the structure of mechanical parts, especially such structural details as the invisible or occluded holes. Further, the assembly order can also be conjectured to some extent from an illustration in which several assembly relations are shown simultaneously. By taking advantage of the foregoing information, the system can decide whether an object is equal to the assembly constructed from the given illustration.
['Shoujie He', 'Tadahiro Kitahashi', 'Norihiro Abe']
Understanding mechanical assembly illustrations‐obtaining assembly information from auxiliary lines showing assembly relations