Trends in Special Library Buildings

published or submitted for publicatio

A new local basis for designing with tensioned splines

Journal ArticleRecently there has been a great deal of interest in the use of "tension" parameters to augment control mesh vertices as design handles for piecewise polynomials. A particular local cubic basis called p-splines, which has been termed a "generalization of B-splines", has been proposed as an appropriate basis. These functions are defined only for floating knot sequences. This paper uses the known property of B-splines that with appropriate knot vectors they span what are called here spaces of tensioned splines, and that particular combinations of them, called LT-splines, form bases for the spaces of tensioned splines. In addition, this paper shows that these new proposed bases have the variation diminishing property, the convex hull property, and straightforward knot insertion algorithms, and that both curves and individual basis functions can be easily computed. Sometimes it is desirable to interpolate points and also use these tension parameters so interpolation methods using the LT-spline bases are presented. Finally, the above properties are established for uniform and nonuniform knot vectors, open and floating end conditions, and homogeneous and nonhomogeneous tension parameter pairs

Psychiatric referrals in a mental hospital and the interaction between social worker and psychiatrist

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Second order surface analysis using hybrid symbolic and numeric operators

Journal ArticleResults from analyzing the curvature of a surface can be used to improve the implementation, efficiency, and effectiveness of manufacturing and visualization of sculptured surfaces. In this paper, we develop a robust method using hybrid symbolic and numeric operators to create trimmed surfaces each of which is solely convex, concave, or saddle and partitions the original surface. The same method is also used to identify regions whose curvature lies within prespecified bounds

Adaptive isocurves based rendering for freeform surfaces

technical reportFreeform surface rendering is traditionally performed by approximating the surface with polygons and then rendering the polygons This approach is extremely common because of the complexity in accurately rendering the surfaces directly Recently?? several papers presented methods to render surfaces as sequences of isocurves Unfortunately?? these methods start by assuming that an appropriate collection of isocurves has already been derived The algorithms themselves neither automatically create an optimal or almost optimal set of isocurves so the whole surface would be correctly rendered without having pixels redundantly visited nor automatically compute the parameter spacing required between isocurves to guarantee such coverage In this paper?? a new algorithm is developed to ll these needs An algorithm is introduced that automat ically computes a set of almost optimal isocurves covering the entire surface area This algorithm can be combined with a fast curve rendering method?? to make surface rendering without polygonal approximation practica

Volume rendering with multidimensional peak finding

Journal ArticlePeak finding provides more accurate classification for direct volume rendering by sampling directly at local maxima in a transfer function, allowing for better reproduction of high-frequency features. However, the 1D peak finding technique does not extend to higherdimensional classification. In this work, we develop a new method for peak finding with multidimensional transfer functions, which looks for peaks along the image of the ray. We use piecewise approximations to dynamically sample in transfer function space between world-space samples. As with unidimensional peak finding, this approach is useful for specifying transfer functions with greater precision, and for accurately rendering noisy volume data at lower sampling rates. Multidimensional peak finding produces comparable image quality with order-of-magnitude better performance, and can reproduce features omitted entirely by standard classification. With no precomputation or storage requirements, it is an attractive alternative to preintegration for multidimensional transfer functions

Error bounded approximate reparametrization of NURBS curves

Journal ArticleThis paper reports research on solutions to the following reparametrization problem: approximate c(r(t)) by a NURBS where c is a NURBS curve and r may, or may not, be a NURBS function. There are many practical applications of this problem including establishing and exploring correspondence in geometry, creating related speed profiles along motion curves for animation, specifying speeds along tool paths, and identifying geometrically equivalent, or nearly equivalent, curve mappings. A framework for the approximation problem is described using two related algorithmic schemes. One constrains the shape of the approximation to be identical to the original curve c. The other relaxes this constraint. New algorithms for important cases of curve reparametrization are developed from within this framework. They produce results with bounded error and address approximate arc length parametrizations of curves, approximate inverses of NURBS functions, and reparametrizations that establish user specified tolerances as bounds on the Frechet distance between parametric curves

Feature-based process planning for CNC machining

Journal ArticleToday CNC machining is used successfully to provide program-driven medium lot size manufacturing. The range of applicability of CNC machining should be greater: For small lot sizes such as prototyping or custom products, these machines should provide quick turnaround and flexible production scheduling. To set up for larger lot size production, the CNC machines can be used to construct small lots of production tooling, such as jigs, fixtures, molds and dies

Adaptive isocurves based rendering for freeform surfaces

Journal ArticleFreeform surface rendering is traditionally performed by approximating the surface with polygons and then rendering the polygons. This approach is extremely common because of the complexity in accurately rendering the surfaces directly. Recently, several papers presented methods to render surfaces as sequences of isocurves. Unfortunately, these methods start by assuming that an appropriate collection of isocurves has already been derived. The algorithms themselves neither automatically create an optimal or almost optimal set of isocurves so t h e whole surface would be correctly rendered without having pixels redundantly visited nor automatically compute the parameter spacing required between isocurves to guarantee such coverage. In this paper, a new algorithm is developed to fill these needs. An algorithm is introduced that automatically computes a set of almost optimal isocurves covering the entire surface area. This algorithm can be combined with a fast curve rendering method, to make surface rendering without polygonal approximation practical

Volumetric parameterization and trivariate B-spline fitting using harmonic functions

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