Development of automatic surface reconstruction technique in reverse engineering

The computer-aided design model reconstruction process is generally very complex, as it requires substantial efforts in planning and editing data points, curves, and surfaces. A novel method is developed in this study for automatic surface reconstruction from a huge number of triangular meshes. The proposed method is mainly composed of the following five steps: mesh simplification, quadrilateral mesh generation, curve net construction, connectivity data preparation, and multiple surfaces fitting with G¹ continuity across the boundaries. The first three steps build the boundary curves of the surfaces. The fourth step prepares the data needed for surface fitting, which includes segmented points, continuity conditions on the boundaries, and topological relationship of the data. In the final step, all regions of points are fitted into appropriate surfaces, with the accuracy and smoothness of the surfaces controlled and G¹ continuity between the surfaces. A detailed discussion for each of the above algorithms is provided. Successful examples are also presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.