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On the medial surface approximations of extrusions

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Abstract

Generating the medial surface for a general boundary representation model raises several difficulties. Problems might emerge from the complexity of the resulting equations, singularities caused by unforeseen relative boundary element positions and orientations, etc. The majority of the current algorithms are based on the topology of the boundary representation model and produce wireframes composed of straight lines regardless of the real medial surfaces. Many of the solids used in engineering can be represented by extrusions, delimited by a cross-section and an extrusion distance. This paper develops a fast and efficient method for creating the facetted approximations of the medial surfaces of extrusions generated by sweeping along the normal direction to the generating cross-section.

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Notes

  1. The execution time was measured on a 400 MHz PC.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Swiss CTI project 3DLM. We would also like to acknowledge project support from our project partners LIA/EPFL, EIVd, APCO and Precisionsoft. The authors also thank Dr. Ian Stroud for his valuable comments and contributions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of CAD/CAM, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ME Ecublens, 1015 , Lausanne, Switzerland

    A. Csabai & P. Xirouchakis

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  1. A. Csabai
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  2. P. Xirouchakis
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Correspondence to P. Xirouchakis.

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Csabai, A., Xirouchakis, P. On the medial surface approximations of extrusions. Engineering with Computers 20, 65–74 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-004-0270-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-004-0270-x

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