AI for Design Quality & DFM
How automated compliance checking verifies designs against manufacturing standards like ASME Y14.5, ISO 286, AS9102, and RoHS, with cited sources.
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7 min read
Michelle Ben-David
Michelle Ben-David is a mechanical engineer and Technion graduate. She served in an IDF elite technology and intelligence unit, where she developed multidisciplinary systems integrating mechanics, electronics, and advanced algorithms. Her engineering background spans robotics, medical devices, and automotive systems.
BOTTOM LINE
Compliance is not one check but many, spread across published standards like ASME Y14.5, ISO 286, AS9102, and RoHS, plus the internal rules every company adds. Manual review cannot keep pace with the volume, stay consistent across reviewers, or run early enough to matter. Automation closes those gaps where standards are explicit and design data is structured, while leaving judgment calls to engineers.
The deciding factor is grounding. A check is only useful if it cites the rule behind it and draws from your own standards and parts. Build the combined library, trigger checks on events, record every result with its source, and let automation handle the reading while engineers handle the deciding. That is how compliance moves from a release gate to a question you can answer at any stage.
Every mechanical part carries a stack of obligations that have nothing to do with whether it works. A drawing has to speak the language of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing. A shaft and a hole have to share a fit class. A first article submission has to satisfy an aerospace customer. An electronic assembly has to stay below substance limits set by regulators in Brussels. Miss one of these and the part can still pass a bench test while failing the audit, the inspection, or the import check.
Compliance checking is the work of confirming that a design meets these external standards and the internal design rules a company layers on top of them. For years it has been a manual ritual: a senior engineer marks up a drawing, a quality lead cross references a spec, a checklist gets initialed. The work is slow, it is uneven, and it tends to happen late, when changes cost the most.
Automated compliance checking moves that review earlier and makes it repeatable. The promise is not that software replaces judgment, but that it reads a design against named standards and your own rules, flags the gaps, and points to the exact clause behind each flag. This article walks through what those standards are, where automation helps, where it does not, and how to put a checking workflow in place.
What manufacturing compliance actually means
Compliance in a mechanical context is not a single rulebook. It is a set of overlapping standards, each owned by a different body and aimed at a different risk. A practical checking program has to recognize which ones apply to a given part and design.
A few of the standards that show up most often:
ASME Y14.5, the dimensioning and tolerancing standard. The 2018 revision establishes the symbols, rules, and definitions for stating and interpreting geometric dimensioning and tolerancing on drawings and on models defined in digital data, per the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
ISO 286, the international system of limits and fits. It defines tolerance grades for holes and shafts so that mating parts assemble with a predictable clearance, transition, or interference fit.
AS9102, the aerospace first article inspection requirement. Published through SAE and the IAQG, it provides the structured process for validating that a production run produces parts matching the design before full production begins.
RoHS, the European Union directive that restricts hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment.
On top of these sit company specific rules: approved material lists, preferred fastener catalogs, minimum wall thicknesses, and naming conventions. Those internal rules are often where the real friction lives, because they are rarely written down in one place. Good compliance work treats published standards and internal rules as one combined checklist, which is also why engineering knowledge management sits so close to compliance.
IN PRACTICE
The connection to our PDM and using that as a data source is legit the best thing ever. I found three viable bracket options fitting my exact envelope constraints, in minutes, not days.
Eytan S., R&D Engineer
Why manual checking breaks down
Manual compliance review fails in predictable ways, and none of them are about effort. They are about scale and timing.
The first problem is volume. A single drawing can carry dozens of dimensions, datums, and feature controls. ASME Y14.5-2018 even discourages plus and minus tolerances for relationships between features in favor of geometric controls of position, profile, orientation, and runout, which means a reviewer has to read a richer symbolic language correctly every time. Reading every callout against the standard, by hand, on every revision, is more than a person can do consistently.
The second problem is inconsistency. Two reviewers apply the same standard differently, and the same reviewer applies it differently on a Friday afternoon than on a Monday morning. The result is that some violations slip through while harmless choices get flagged, which trains engineers to ignore the review.
The third problem is timing. Manual checks tend to cluster at the end, near a design review or a release gate. By then the geometry is settled, suppliers may be quoting, and a compliance miss forces an expensive loop back. This is the same late discovery pattern that makes duplicate parts so costly, a problem covered in the real cost of duplicate parts. The earlier a check runs, the cheaper the fix, which is the core argument for automation and the foundation of solid AI design review that catches errors before manufacturing.
What automation can and cannot check
Automated compliance checking is strongest where a standard is explicit and where the design data is structured. It is weakest where the standard calls for engineering judgment about intent. Knowing the line matters.
Checks that automation handles well:
Tolerance and fit verification. Against ISO 286, software can confirm that a hole and shaft pair resolves to the intended clearance, transition, or interference fit, since the standard reduces fit to letter and grade combinations.
Drawing and annotation completeness. A checker can confirm that datums are defined, that feature control frames are well formed under ASME Y14.5, and that required notes are present.
Substance and material screening. Against RoHS, automation can compare a bill of materials to the directive, which currently restricts ten substances, with maximum concentrations of 0.1 percent by weight in homogeneous material for most and 0.01 percent for cadmium, per the European Commission.
First article documentation. Against AS9102, a tool can verify that the required forms are populated and that every drawing characteristic is balloned and accounted for.
Checks that still need a human: whether a datum scheme reflects how the part actually functions, whether a tolerance is achievable on the chosen process, and whether a substance exemption applies. Automation flags the question. The engineer answers it. That division of labor is what makes the combination work.
Building a compliance checking workflow
A workflow that holds up over time is built on a clear source of truth, a defined trigger, and a record of every result. The technology matters less than the discipline around it.
Start by assembling the standards library. Collect the external standards that apply to your products, ASME Y14.5, ISO 286, AS9102, RoHS, and any others, alongside the internal rules that govern approved materials, fasteners, and geometry. Without this combined library, a checker has nothing authoritative to compare against, and findings cannot cite a source.
Next, decide when checks run. The strongest programs trigger checks on events rather than on calendar dates: a material change kicks off a substance screen, a new part triggers a search of existing parts before release, and a design review routes by component criticality. Tying checks to events keeps them early. It also connects compliance to part reuse, since the search that prevents a duplicate is the same search that surfaces a known compliant part, a link explored in why PDM search is broken.
Finally, keep records. Every check should produce a result, a cited clause, and a disposition. AS9102 itself is built around documented evidence, with first article submissions tied to balloned drawings, so a habit of recording compliance findings fits the way regulated industries already work. For teams choosing where this logic should live, the 2026 guide to PDM software for mechanical engineers is a useful reference.
How Leo grounds checks in your standards and rules
The hard part of automated compliance is not running a rule. It is knowing which rule applies, finding the authoritative text, and showing the engineer why a flag was raised so they trust it. A check that cannot point to its source is just noise.
Leo is an intelligence layer that sits on top of your existing PDM and PLM system rather than replacing it. Its value for compliance is grounding: Leo reads a design question against your standards library and your organizational rules together, then returns an answer with the source cited. Instead of a reviewer recalling whether a feature control frame is valid under ASME Y14.5 or whether a material clears RoHS, the answer comes back tied to the clause it rests on. Because Leo retrieves from your own data, the rules it checks are your rules, not a generic default, and the engineer can see the reasoning behind every flag.
That grounding turns compliance checking from a gate at the end into a question you can ask at any point in the design, with a traceable answer each time. Integrations are available for SolidWorks PDM, Autodesk Vault, PTC Windchill, Siemens Teamcenter, and Arena PLM, so the standards and parts you check against are the ones already in your vault.
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