Abstract
Swept volume is the sweeping region of moving objects. It is used in various applications such as interference detection in assembly design, visualization of manipulator motions in robotics, simulation of the volume removal by a cutter in NC machining. The shape of swept volume is defined by the envelope, which is determined by the boundary of moving objects and its direction of motion. In order to implement the generation of swept volume, researchers have taken much effort to develop the techniques how to generate the envelope. However, their results are confined to envelope generated only in simple shape objects, such as polyhedra or quadric surfaces. This study provided the envelope generation algorithm of NURBS objects. Characteristic points were obtained by applying the geometric conditions of envelope to NURBS equations, and then characteristic curves were created by means of interpolating those points. Silhouette edges were determined in the following procedures. First, two adjacent surfaces which have the same edge were found from B-Rep data. Then, by taking the scalar product of velocity vector of a point on that edge with each normal vector on two surfaces, silhouette edges were discriminated. Finally, envelope was generated along moving direction in the form of ruled surfaces by using both the partial information between initial and final position of objects affecting envelope along with characteristic curves and silhouette edge. Since this developed algorithm can be applied not only to NURBS objects but also to their Boolean objects, it can be used effectively in various applications.
