Reverse engineering based on virtual volume sculpting

Abstract

This paper presents a novel reverse engineering methodology that is based on volume removing. Given a physical model, virtual clay in which the model can be embedded is generated in the computer with the help of a fixture. The virtual clay is represented by voxel arrays and the dimension of the virtual clay is defined based on the bounding box of the model. When digitizing, a three dimensional position tracker is moved around the physical model in a freehand manner by the user. The movements of the tracker are reflected by its counterpart in the computer: a virtual tracker. The swept volume of the virtual tracker will be removed from the virtual clay. When no more virtual clay can be removed, the remained part of the virtual clay is a volume representation of the physical model. The tracker used in this paper is a probe attached to a six degree of freedom (6DOF) haptic device. Physical constraints and virtual constraints are coupled in the system. The strength and weakness of the presented method are analyzed and the applicability is discussed.