Optimal Method of Select Locating Points for Multi-operation FixtureTIAN Shao-peng~1,HUANG Zheng-dong~2, WU Sen~1, CAO Zheng-ce~1 (1.School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China;2.CAD Center in the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074,China)An approach for optimally selecting locating points of multi-operation fixture was presented. For the single-operation fixture, this approach can find an optimal configuration of locating points on a set of faces of the work piece, which minimize the error transfer from locating points to machining features. In formulation of the optimization, the error transfer was modeled by using an error transfer matrix. Eigenvalues of the matrix were used as objective functions of the optimization. For the multi-operation fixture, the object function can be combined by putting coefficient to every operation. An example was included to illustrate effectiveness of the proposed approach. Compared with traditional methods in which only one operation was considered, this approach was more effective and efficient for multi-operation fixture.multi-operation; fixture layout; machining feature; localization; optimal design