Solid Modeling

Abstract

Solids represent a large variety of objects we see and handle. The chapters on curves and surfaces treated earlier are intended to form the basis for solid or volumetric modeling. Solid modeling techniques have been developed since early 1970’s using wireframe, surface models, boundary representation (b-rep), constructive solid geometry (CSG), spatial occupancy and enumeration. A solid model not only requires surface and boundary geometry definition, but it also requires topological information such as, interior, connectivity, holes and pockets. Wire-frame and surface models cannot describe these properties adequately. Further, in design, one needs to combine and connect solids to create composite models for which spatial addressability of every point on and in the solid is required. This needs to be done in a manner that it does not become computationally intractable.