Sketch-based Solid Prototype Modeling System with Dual Data Structure of Point-set Surfaces and Voxels

This paper proposes a new solid-shape modeling system based on a lusterware-image illustration. The proposed method reconstructs a three dimensional solid shape from a set of rough sketches that are typically drawn in the early stages of the design process. The sketches do not have to be strictly accurate, and this tolerance to the roughness of the input sketches is one of the major advantages of the proposed method. The proposed system creates an initial shape based on the silhouette of the input lusterware-images. Then the user can edit the initial shape with intuitive cutting and dishing-up operations, which are based on sketching user interface. To achieve the goal, the system retains the geometric model with two representations: a point-set data and a volume data. This dual data structure allows the program to create an initial shape from the input images with little computational cost, and the user can apply cutting and dishing-up operations without substantially increasing computational and memory requirements. In this research, we have tested the proposed system by reconstructing solid models of some mechanical parts from rough sketches. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is useful for the prototyping of a solid shape.