Optimized normal and distance matching for heterogeneous object modeling

This paper presents a new optimization methodology of material blending for heterogeneous object modeling by matching the material governing features for designing a heterogeneous object. The proposed method establishes point-to-point correspondence represented by a set of connecting lines between two material directrices. To blend the material features between the directrices, a heuristic optimization method developed with the objective is to maximize the sum of the inner products of the unit normals at the end points of the connecting lines and minimize the sum of the lengths of connecting lines. The geometric features with material information are matched to generate non-self-intersecting and non-twisted connecting surfaces. By subdividing the connecting lines into equal number of segments, a series of intermediate piecewise curves are generated to represent the material metamorphosis between the governing material features. Alternatively, a dynamic programming approach developed in our earlier work is presented for comparison purposes. Result and computational efficiency of the proposed heuristic method is also compared with earlier techniques in the literature. Computer interface implementation and illustrative examples are also presented in this paper

Information hiding through variance of the parametric orientation underlying a B-rep face

Watermarking technologies have been proposed for many different,types of digital media. However, to this date, no viable watermarking techniques have yet emerged for the high value B-rep (i.e. Boundary Representation) models used in 3D mechanical CAD systems. In this paper, the authors propose a new approach (PO-Watermarking) that subtly changes a model's geometric representation to incorporate a 'transparent' signature. This scheme enables software applications to create fragile, or robust watermarks without changing the size of the file, or shape of the CAD model. Also discussed is the amount of information the proposed method could transparently embed into a B-rep model. The results presented demonstrate the embedding and retrieval of text strings and investigate the robustness of the approach after a variety of transformation and modifications have been carried out on the data

Towards recovery of complex shapes in meshes using digital images for reverse engineering applications

When an object owns complex shapes, or when its outer surfaces are simply inaccessible, some of its parts may not be captured during its reverse engineering. These deficiencies in the point cloud result in a set of holes in the reconstructed mesh. This paper deals with the use of information extracted from digital images to recover missing areas of a physical object. The proposed algorithm fills in these holes by solving an optimization problem that combines two kinds of information: (1) the geometric information available on the surrounding of the holes, (2) the information contained in an image of the real object. The constraints come from the image irradiance equation, a first-order non-linear partial differential equation that links the position of the mesh vertices to the light intensity of the image pixels. The blending conditions are satisfied by using an objective function based on a mechanical model of bar network that simulates the curvature evolution over the mesh. The inherent shortcomings both to the current holefilling algorithms and the resolution of the image irradiance equations are overcom

Universal attraction force-inspired freeform surface modeling for 3D sketching

This paper presents a novel freeform surface modeling method to construct a freeform surface from 3D sketch. The approach is inspired by Newton’s universal attraction force law to construct a surface model from rough boundary curves and unorganized interior characteristic curves which may cross the boundary curves or not. Based on these unorganized curves, an initial surface can be obtained for conceptual design and it can be improved later in a commercial package. The approach has been tested with examples and it is capable of dealing with unorganized design curves for surface modeling

Repairing triangle meshes built from scanned point cloud

The Reverse Engineering process consists of a succession of operations that aim at creating a digital representation of a physical model. The reconstructed geometric model is often a triangle mesh built from a point cloud acquired with a scanner. Depending on both the object complexity and the scanning process, some areas of the object outer surface may never be accessible, thus inducing some deficiencies in the point cloud and, as a consequence, some holes in the resulting mesh. This is simply not acceptable in an integrated design process where the geometric models are often shared between the various applications (e.g. design, simulation, manufacturing). In this paper, we propose a complete toolbox to fill in these undesirable holes. The hole contour is first cleaned to remove badly-shaped triangles that are due to the scanner noise. A topological grid is then inserted and deformed to satisfy blending conditions with the surrounding mesh. In our approach, the shape of the inserted mesh results from the minimization of a quadratic function based on a linear mechanical model that is used to approximate the curvature variation between the inner and surrounding meshes. Additional geometric constraints can also be specified to further shape the inserted mesh. The proposed approach is illustrated with some examples coming from our prototype software

Discrete curvature approximations and segmentation of polyhedral surfaces

The segmentation of digitized data to divide a free form surface into patches is one of the key steps required to perform a reverse engineering process of an object. To this end, discrete curvature approximations are introduced as the basis of a segmentation process that lead to a decomposition of digitized data into areas that will help the construction of parametric surface patches. The approach proposed relies on the use of a polyhedral representation of the object built from the digitized data input. Then, it is shown how noise reduction, edge swapping techniques and adapted remeshing schemes can participate to different preparation phases to provide a geometry that highlights useful characteristics for the segmentation process. The segmentation process is performed with various approximations of discrete curvatures evaluated on the polyhedron produced during the preparation phases. The segmentation process proposed involves two phases: the identification of characteristic polygonal lines and the identification of polyhedral areas useful for a patch construction process. Discrete curvature criteria are adapted to each phase and the concept of invariant evaluation of curvatures is introduced to generate criteria that are constant over equivalent meshes. A description of the segmentation procedure is provided together with examples of results for free form object surfaces