In the frame of the COPERNICUS EC-Program a CAD-based Programming System for arc welding robots was developed in an international project with German and Hungarian participants. The basic goal of the system is to assist robotized arc welding in Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SME) mostly for small and medium lot sizes. The product of the development is such an interactive off-line robot programming system that gives assistance to easily design and then perform arc welding tasks. Commercially available off line robot programming systems are either too expensive or unable to provide all required functionalities. PROARC is implemented on the world-leading PC-based CAD system, AutoCAD, by using its new object-oriented interface ARX. However beside these platform related attributes of the system, PROARC provides a number of efficient functionalities for the seam programming. In order to allow the system to be integrated into a CIM environment, standardised OSI (Open System lnterconnection) interfaces have been chosen. The paper gives a more detailed view about the defined STEP interface and the implemented OSI based network connection.
CAD/CAM, arc welding, integration, MAP, MMS.
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