The system rules: fixture type, workpiece shape, locating model cannot be “*”or“?”. When the system is designed, the attribute information of the three items does not have these options, which means the certain attribute must be selected.
The last three digits are the case identification number, which means the 13 digits of the case feature are the same, and the number of these three digits is used for distinguishing them.
The system also rules: “000” is a prototype case, which is used for retrieval, and other cases are “001”,“002”,…,  which are used for reference cases to be searched by designers. If occasionally one of them needs to be changed as the prototype case, first it must be required to apply to change the one to “000”, and the former is changed to referential case automatically.
The construction of the case index code is shown in Fig.1.
 
1.2 Case library
The case library consists of lots of predefined cases. Case representation is one of the most important issues in case based reasoning. So compounding with the index code,.
1.3 Hierarchical form of Case
The structure similarity of the fixture is represented as the whole fixture similarity, components similarity and component similarity. So the whole fixture case library, components case library, component case library of fixture are formed correspondingly. Usually design information of the whole fixture is composed of workpiece information and workpiece procedure information, which represent the fixture satisfying the specifically designing function demand. The whole fixture case is made up of function components, which are described by the function components’ names and numbers. The components case represents the members. (function component and other structure components， main driven parameter, the number, and their constrain relations.)  The component case (the lowest layer of the fixture) is the structure of function component and other components. In the modern fixture design there are lots of parametric standard parts and common non standard parts. So the component case library should record the specification parameter and the way in which it keeps them.
2 Strategy of Case Retrieval
In the case based design of fixtures ,the most important thing is the retrieval of the similarity, which can help to obtain the most similar case, and to cut down the time of adaptation. According to the requirement of fixture design, the strategy of case retrieval combines the way of the nearest neighbor and knowledge guided. That is, first search on depth, then on breadth; the knowledge guided strategy means to search on the knowledge rule from root to the object, which is firstly searched by the fixture type, then by the shape of the workpiece, thirdly by the locating method. For example, if the case index code includes the milling fixture of fixture type, the search is just for all milling fixtures, then for box of workpiece shape, the third for 1plane+ 2pine of locating method. If there is no match of it, then the search stops on depth, and returns to the upper layer, and retrieves all the relative cases on breadth.
Retrieval algorithms:
1)According to the case index information of fixture case library, search the relevant case library;
2)Match the case index code with the code of each case of the case library, and calculate the value of the similarity measure;
3)Sort the order of similarity measure, the biggest value, which is the most analogical case.
Similarity between two cases is based on the similarity between the two cases. features. The calculation of similarity measure depends on the type of the feature. The value of similarity can be calculated for numerical values, for example, compareWorkpiece with the weight of 50kg and 20kg. The value can also be calculated between non numerical values, for example, now the first 13 digits index code is all non numerical values. The similarity measure of a fixture is calculated as follows: 夹具设计研究与应用英文文献和中文翻译(2):http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_3763.html