Reverse engineering of CAD models via clustering and approximate implicitization

In applications like computer aided design, geometric models are often represented numerically as polynomial splines or NURBS, even when they originate from primitive geometry. For purposes such as redesign and isogeometric analysis, it is of interest to extract information about the underlying geometry through reverse engineering. In this work we develop a novel method to determine these primitive shapes by combining clustering analysis with approximate implicitization. The proposed method is automatic and can recover algebraic hypersurfaces of any degree in any dimension. In exact arithmetic, the algorithm returns exact results. All the required parameters, such as the implicit degree of the patches and the number of clusters of the model, are inferred using numerical approaches in order to obtain an algorithm that requires as little manual input as possible. The effectiveness, efficiency and robustness of the method are shown both in a theoretical analysis and in numerical examples implemented in Python

Compactifications of rational maps, and the implicit equations of their images

In this paper we give different compactifications for the domain and the codomain of an affine rational map $f$ which parametrizes a hypersurface. We show that the closure of the image of this map (with possibly some other extra hypersurfaces) can be represented by a matrix of linear syzygies. We compactify $\Bbb {A}^{n-1}$ into an $(n-1)$-dimensional projective arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay subscheme of some $\Bbb {P}^N$. One particular interesting compactification of $\Bbb {A}^{n-1}$ is the toric variety associated to the Newton polytope of the polynomials defining $f$. We consider two different compactifications for the codomain of $f$: $\Bbb {P}^n$ and $(\Bbb {P}^1)^n$. In both cases we give sufficient conditions, in terms of the nature of the base locus of the map, for getting a matrix representation of its closed image, without involving extra hypersurfaces. This constitutes a direct generalization of the corresponding results established in [BuseJouanolou03], [BuseChardinJouanolou06], [BuseDohm07], [BotbolDickensteinDohm09] and [Botbol09].Comment: 2 images, 28 pages. To appear in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebr

Mini-Workshop: Surface Modeling and Syzygies

The problem of determining the implicit equation of the image of a rational map φ : P2 99K P3 is of theoretical interest in algebraic geometry, and of practical importance in geometric modeling. There are essentially three methods which can be applied to the problem: Gröbner bases, resultants, and syzygies. Elimination via Gröbner basis methods tends to be computationally intensive and, being a general tool, is not adapted to the geometry of specific problems. Thus, it is primarily the latter two techniques which are used in practice. This is an extremely active area of research where many different perspectives come into play. The mini-workshop brought together a diverse group of researchers with different areas of expertise

Tropical secant graphs of monomial curves

The first secant variety of a projective monomial curve is a threefold with an action by a one-dimensional torus. Its tropicalization is a three-dimensional fan with a one-dimensional lineality space, so the tropical threefold is represented by a balanced graph. Our main result is an explicit construction of that graph. As a consequence, we obtain algorithms to effectively compute the multidegree and Chow polytope of an arbitrary projective monomial curve. This generalizes an earlier degree formula due to Ranestad. The combinatorics underlying our construction is rather delicate, and it is based on a refinement of the theory of geometric tropicalization due to Hacking, Keel and Tevelev.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures. Major revision of the exposition. In particular, old Sections 4 and 5 are merged into a single section. Also, added Figure 3 and discussed Chow polytopes of rational normal curves in Section