Designing and developing highly engineered products requires direct (and more dynamic) associations between customers’ parametric or feature-based specifications and product characteristics (or its behaviors).
Knowledge-based Engineering concepts are found more useful and powerful for reusability and versatility than feature-based CAD/CAM concepts.
The following case histories may provide you with more details on concepts and methods.
Conference Paper A Knowledge-Based System Engineering Process for Obtaining E...
Conference Paper Knowledge-based Enterprising (KBE) Strategy for Lean Product...
In attachment, a very good book of Xun Xu, which talks about Feature-based CAM/CAPP/CAM chain. I give you also some good surveys about feature recognition, the most critical link between CAD and CAPP.