N. Gross (Germany)
CAD/CAM, subdivision surfaces, machining
Subdivision surfaces were first developed as an approach to generalize the patchwise quadrilateral structure of the splines to an arbitrary topological representation. They calculate a complete surface model of arbitrary topology in a global calculation step. The algorithms are based on a recursive refinement of an input mesh. The output surfaces can either be described by their limit points or as a collection of parametric patches. Sometimes these patches are however very complicated to describe and evaluate. Furthermore, subdivision algorithms tend to oscillate around extraordinary vertices. For these reasons, subdivision surfaces are not yet widely used in mechanical engineering. In this paper, the FIN algorithm which has been designed especially to meet these problems is applied to problems from manufacturing and reverse engineering. It is proven that it has considerable advantages over methods not based on a subdivision approach.
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