Approximation of a compound surface to polyhedral model

복합곡면의 다면체 곡면 근사

Presented in this study is an algorithmic procedure to obtain polyhedral model from a compound surface. The compound surface in this study denotes a collection of trimmed surfaces without topological relations. The procedure consists of two main modules: CAD data interface, and surface conversion to polyhedral model. The interface module gets geometric information from CAD databases, and makes topological information by scanning the geometric information. We are investigating CATIA system as a data source system. In the surface conversion module, a shell(compound surface with topological information) is approximated to a triangular-faceted polyhedral surface model through node sampling and triangulation steps. The obtained polyhedral model should obey the vertex-to-vertex rule and meet tolerance requirements. Since the polyhedral model has a simple data structure and geometry processing for it is very efficient and robust, the polyhedral model can be used in various applications, such as surface rendering in computer graphics, FEM model for engineering analysis, CAPP for surface machining, data generation for SLA, and NC tool path generation.