Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is a crucial design stage within the heavy vehicle manufacturing process that involves optimising the order and feasibility of the parts assembly process to reduce manufacturing complexity and overall cost. Existing work has focused on conducting DFMA within virtual environments to reduce manufacturing costs, but users are less able to relate and compare physical characteristics of a virtual component with real physical objects. Therefore, a Mixed Reality (MR) application is developed for engineers to visualise and manipulate assembly parts virtually, conduct and plan out an assembly within its intended physical environment. Two pilot evaluations were conducted with both engineering professionals and non-engineers to assess effectiveness of the software for assembly planning. Usability results suggest that the application is overall usable (M=56.1, SD=7.89), and participants felt a sense of involvement in the activity (M=13.1, SD=3.3). Engineering professionals see the application as a useful and cost-effective tool for optimising their mechanical assembly designs.

翻译：制造和组装设计(DFMA)是重型车辆制造过程的关键设计阶段,它涉及优化部件组装过程的顺序和可行性,以减少制造复杂性和总体成本;现有工作的重点是在虚拟环境中进行DFMA,以减少制造成本,但用户不太能够将虚拟部件的物理特征与实际实物物体联系起来和比较;因此,为工程师开发了一个混合现实(MR)应用软件,以便虚拟地对装配部件进行可视化和操作,在预定的物理环境中进行和规划组装;与工程专业人员和非工程师进行了两个试点评价,以评估组装规划软件的有效性;可用性结果表明,应用软件总体上有用(M=56.1,SD=7.89),与会者感到参与活动的感觉(M=13.1,SD=3.3);工程专业人员认为,该应用软件是优化机械组装设计的一个有用和具有成本效益的工具。