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AssigneeRaytheon Company
InventorsRaymond C. Laning, Steven J. Manson
Estimating the term…
A slicing tool works with a solid modeling system to partition the geometric representation of a three-dimensional part into a series of simpler sub-parts the union of which replicates the original part in a manner that introduces a minimal number of new surfaces in each sub-part and in total. This approach uses the existing analytic surfaces that define the part geometry to partition the part and selects a partition from a quality metric based on the number of trimmed surfaces of the part being partitioned and the candidate sub-parts. This approach greatly reduces the complexity of any downstream solid modeling applications that perform combinatorial surface operations on the geometric representation of the series of sub-parts to analyze physical characteristics such as radiation, mechanical, optical, thermal, structural or biological of the original part.
A system, comprising:
A system, comprising:
A computer-implemented method of subdividing a three-dimensional part into a series of simpler sub-parts the union of which is the part, said part represented by a list analytic bounding surfaces that are trimmed by other analytic bounding surfaces, curves and points that define a geometric representation of the part, comprising:
A computer-implemented method of subdividing a three-dimensional part into a series of simpler sub-parts the union of which is the part, said part represented by a list analytic bounding surfaces that are trimmed by other analytic bounding surfaces, curves and points that define a geometric representation of the part, comprising:
A system, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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Computer-aided design [CAD]: geometric CAD
Computer-aided design [cad]
Three-dimensional [3d] modelling for computer graphics
Details relating to CAD techniques: constraint-based CAD
Term ended 22 Aug 2024 (estimated)
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the partitioning of three-dimensional parts such as mechanical, optical or biological parts into simpler representations to support downstream solid modeling applications that perform combinatorial surface operations on the geometric representations of the series of sub-parts to analyze physical characteristics such as radiation, mechanical, optical, thermal, structural or biological of the original part.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system from end-to-end for generating a CAD model representation of a part, partitioning the representation into a series of sub-parts and performing combinatorial surface operations on the part using the sub-part representations to analyze a physical characteristic of the part;
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the I/O between the slicing tool and solid-modeling system;
FIGS. 3a through 3c are diagrams of a castlenut part, the existing analytic bounding and ambiguity surfaces and the selecting slicing surface;
The present invention provides a slicing tool for use with a solid modeling system that partitions the geometric representation of a three-dimensional part into a series of simpler sub-parts the union of which replicates the original part in a manner that introduces a minimal number of new surfaces in each sub-part and in total. This approach is designed to greatly reduce the complexity of any downstream solid modeling applications that perform combinatorial surface operations on the geometric representation of the series of sub-parts to analyze physical characteristics such as radiation, mechanical, optical, thermal, structural or biological of the original part.
The slicing tool achieves optimality by being informed by geometric data already contained in the part geometry. In other words, the tool uses existing bounding surfaces to slice the part and selects the best slice (or one that is good enough to terminate the search). By using this approach, one can do the necessary computation on smaller and smaller regions of the geometry without introducing any more complexity (boundaries) to the model than it already contains—a divide and conquer approach that works well in this case. Another unique aspect of this approach is the ability to use different types of boundaries to do the subdivision. The boundaries are obtained from the geometry definition, so planes, cylinders, cones, spheres, and toroids are ail usable as dividing surfaces.
As shown in FIG. 1, a CAD system 10 outputs a file 12 that provides a geometric description of one or more parts 14 e.g. a castlenut. These parts may be wholly generated by the CAD system or scanned in such as in medical imaging and configured into the file format. The geometric model is a boundary representation of a part that can have a simple Boolean operation performed on it, that of slicing with a surface that extends to or beyond the existing boundaries of the part. The result is then two or more parts that may also have the Boolean operation performed on them, also with valid results. For input file format, we used both STEP and IGES, which are commonly used standard geometry languages that can describe surface boundaries, solids and Boolean operations on the solids. For each part, the file includes a list of analytic bounding surfaces that are trimmed by other analytic bounding surfaces, curves and points to define the geometric representation of the part. The file also includes instructions for combining the surfaces into the part. These parts can be oriented by translation or rotation in space. This representation is capable of modeling a wide range of objects—for example, from airplanes to the human body. These standard files can be output from models in any CAD system. Other file formats than STEP or IGES that generate the list of analytic bounding surfaces that define the part geometry may be used.