Abstract
Sheet parts that have been drawn on any computer aided design (CAD) system can be manufactured on various stamping and laser-cutting machines with a prescribed set of tools. The expert system described in this paper generates from the CAD data of a part of a complete numerically controlled (NC) manufacturing plan, which contains only punching operations, only laser operations or a punching-laser combination. The main points in the fully automatic NC program generation are the recognition of the sheet part geometry, the determination of the manufacturing variant, the selection of the optimum punching tools, taking account of violation criteria, the introduction of the technology, the arrangement of many parts on a plate and the optimization of tool movement paths.