Reverse engineering: algebraic boundary representations to constructive solid geometry.

Abstract

Recent advances in reverse engineering have focused on recovering a boundary representation (b-rep) of an object, often for integration with rapid prototyping. This boundary representation may be a 3-D point cloud, a triangulation of points, or piecewise algebraic or parametric surfaces. This paper presents work in progress to develop an algorithm to extend the current state of the art in reverse engineering of mechanical parts. This algorithm will take algebraic surface representations as input and will produce a constructive solid geometry (CSG) description that uses solid primitives such as rectangular block, pyramid, sphere, cylinder, and cone. The proposed algorithm will automatically generate a CSG solid model of a part given its algebraic b-rep, thus allowing direct input into a CAD system and subsequent CSG model generation.