Surface Reconstruction from Dexel Data for Virtual Sculpting

Abstract

This paper presents a new method for surface reconstruction from dexel data for virtual sculpting. We are in the midst of developing a dexel model based sculpting system having the capability of interactive solid modeling with haptics interface. The geometric modeling of our sculpting system is based on the Sweep Differential Equation method to compute the boundary of the tool swept volume. Ray casting is used to perform Boolean operations between the tool swept volume and the virtual stock in dexel models to simulate the sculpting process. The dexel data are converted to a series of planar contours in parallel slices (i.e. cross sections). The overlapping ratio between two contour areas is used as the criterion for deciding on the corresponding contours in two adjacent slices. The tiling problem is tackled by using the rule of the shortest distance between points on two corresponding contours. The branching problem is solved by adding one line segment between two contours to form one composite contour. Examples are given to demonstrate the ability of the developed code to convert from dexel data to triangular meshes for the viewing of a sculpted model in different directions.

Meeting Name

Manufacturing Engineering and Materials Handling Engineering

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Composite Materials; Casting; Cross Section (Physics); Differential Equations; Geometric Modeling; Solid Modeling; Bifurcation; Haptic Interfaces

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2004 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2004

Link to Full Text

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