2. Literature Review
Traditionally, the Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP)model has been used for layout problems. The QAP was
introduced by Koopmans and Beckman in 1957for modeling the problem of locating interacting plants of equal
areas[1]. The QAP has been widely applied in various applications such as urban planning, control panel layout and
wiring design and also stated that the QAP is a special case of the facility layout problem due to the assumptions
that all departments have equal areas and locations are fixed with a known priority [5]. The well-known
Construction algorithms like CORELAP (Computerized Relationship Layout Planning) and ALDEP (Automated
Layout Design Program) produce the solution ab initio without requiring any starting layout. Improvement
algorithms, such as CRAFT and COFAD (Computerized Facilities Design), were used to start with an initial layout
and try to improve it with exchanging facility. Hybrid approaches provides both construction phase and final
improvement of arranging facilities.
In order to minimize material handling cost a genetic algorithm methodology was adopted for solving quadratic
assignment problems [6]. An improved genetic algorithm was proposed to solve the unidirectional loop layout in
order to optimize the facilities in workshop[3].
A standards-oriented form-feature extraction system was developed [4] which is known as STEP File format and
it is very easy to extract the AutoCAD diagram into step file format.[2] Presented a model which is mainly projected
to extract the geometric information of rotational parts from STEP file, and this information is use to recognize the
features. A generalized Java code is used to extract the data from STEP file and to recognize the features.