A general approach to automatic generation of triangular meshes on three-dimensional surfaces is presented in this paper. The approach, developed with emphasis on program generality and interface with CAD/CAM systems, is based on the double mapping method and the looping method. The double mapping method is introduced and anew splitting scheme is proposed for the looping method employed for triangular mesh generation on the parametric domain. Several application examples are given.

We developed a Part Information Brokering System, namely PIBS, that can inter-link part suppliers and buyers using WWW(World Wide Web). The major contribution of this paper is that the system provides a 3D collaboration environment that enables multiple users to share the same workspace where they cooperatively manipulate part features in real time. PIBS carries out two major functions: one to maintain part data in a part library, and the other to provide the means for the clients to cooperate. An object-oriented database is used for the part library which stores apart information registered by part suppliers. VRML(Virtual Reality Modeling Language) the ISO standard for 3D visualization on WWW, is used to represent 3D part models. Several Java programs have been implemented to support synchronous and a synchronous communication of the 3D models. Once the users are interconnected through the system, a user's manipulation of part objects is transparently and instantaneously transmitted to the others. This means that all the participants can are the same view and movement of the 3D part models. Since the system is developed using a Java applet-server architecture, it requires no additional software other than standard web browser. The prototype system has been successfully implemented, and demonstrated its applicability to virtual 3D part information sharing.

The bearing design includes the steps of selection bering type, selection bearing subtype, and determining the peripheral equipments. In this paper decision making methodologies are compared to propose a stepwise decision methodology to the bearing selection problem. An artificial neural network trained with design cases is used for selecting a bearing type in the first step. Then the subtype of the bearing is selected using the weighting method, high is a kind of multi-criteria decision making method. Finally, the types of peripheral equipments such as lubrication devices, seals and bearing housings are determined using a rule-based expert system.

In general, turbine blades are usually machined on 5-axis NC machine. The 5-axis machining of sculptured surface offers many advantages over 3-axis machining including the faster material-removal rates and an improved surface finish. But it is difficult and time-consuming to generated interference-free 5-axis tool path. This paper describes research on the algorithm for generation of an interference-free 5-axis NC data for machining turbine blades. The approach, using the section profile derived from the intersection of cutting planes with a triangulated-surface approximation, includes (1) CL-data generation by detecting an interference-free heel angle (2) the calculation method for finding a adaptive feed-rate value, and (3) the inverse kinematics depending on the structure of 5-axis machine.

Existing data structures for non-manifold solid modelers use basic dat entities, such as vertex, edge, loop, face, shell, and region to find adjacency relationships. But, no one clearly identified what additional types of data entitles are necessary to represent incidence relationships. In this paper, we classified the boundary information of vertex, edge, face , and region from the 3-D space view. As the results we can clearly define the boundary information required for adjacency relationships. The existing B-rep data structures for solid modeler are compared whether they have the required boundary information.

For reverse engineering, curves and surfaces are modeled for new products by interpolating the digitized data points. But there are many measuring or deviation errors. Therefore, it is important to handle errors during the curve or surface modeling. If the errors are ignored, designer could get undesirable results. For this reason, fairing procedure with the aesthetics criteria is necessary in computer modeling. This paper presents methods of 3D NURBS curve fairing. The techniques are based on automatic repositioning of the digitized dat points or the NURBS curve control points by a constrained nonlinear optimization algorithm. The objective function is derived variously by derived curved. Constraints are distance measures between the original and the modified digitized data points. Changes I curve shape are analyzed by illustrations of curve shapes, and continuous plotting of curvature and torsion.

This paper presents a feature-based approach to extracting machining features fro a feature-based design model. In the approach, a design feature to machining feature conversion process incrementally converts each added design feature into a machining feature or a set of machining features. The proposed approach an efficiently handle protrusion features and interacting features since it takes advantage of design feature information, design intent, and functional requirements during feature extraction. Protrusion features cannot be directly mapped into machining features so that the removal volumes surrounding protrusion features are extracted and converted it no machining features. By utilizing feature information as well as geometry information during feature extraction, the proposed approach can easily overcome inherent problems relating to feature recognition such as feature interactions and loss of design intent. In addition, a feature extraction process can be simplified, and a large set of complex part can be handled with ease.

An atomatic mesh generation scheme with unstructured quadrilateral elements on trimmed surfaces has been developed. Trimmed surfaces are often encountered in modeling of structures with complex shapes such as aircrafts, automobile structures, pressure vessels and etc. For unstructured mesh generation with quadrilateral elements, a domain decomposition algorithm employing loop operators has been used. Mesh generation on trimmed surface is performed in three steps. First, trimmed surfaces with holes or cuts are transformed to th largest projection planes in which the meshes are constructed. The constructed meshes are transformed to the u-v parametric plane and then finally to the original 3D surfaces. Th exact locations of holes or cuts in projection planes are determined by the Newton-Raphson method. Sample meshes are constructed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Plane sweep plays an important role in computational geometry. This paper shows that an extension of topological plane sweep to three-dimensional space can calculate the volume swept by rotating a solid polyhedral object about a fixed axis. Analyzing the characteristics of rotational swept volumes, we present an incremental algorithm based on the three-dimensional topological sweep technique. Our solution shows the time bound of O(n²·2?+T?), where n is the number of vertices in the original object and T? is time for handling face cycles. Here, α(n) is the inverse of Ackermann's function.