Interactive inspection of solids: cross-sections and interferences

To reduce the cost of correcting design errors, assemblies of mechanical parts are modeled using CAD systems and verified electronically before the designs are sent to manufacturing. Shaded images are insufficient for examining the internal structures of assemblies and for detecting interferences. Thus, designers must rely on expensive numerical techniques that compute geometric representations of cross-sections and of intersections of solids. The solid-clipping approach presented here bypasses these geometric calculations and offers realtime rendering of cross-sections and interferences for solids represented by their facetted boundaries. In its simplest form, the technique is supported by contemporary highend graphics workstations. Its variations, independently developed elsewhere, have already been demonstrated. Our implementation is based on the concept of a cutvolume interactively manipulated to remove obstructing portions of the assembly and reveal its internal structure. For cl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1992
• Where: SIGGRAPH
• Authors: Jarek Rossignac, Abe Megahed, Bengt-Olaf Schneider
• Keywords: Computer Graphics, Expensive Numerical Techniques, Internal Structure, SIGGRAPH 1992, Solids