Freeform shape techniques for improved product design
Postdoc - Paulos Nyirenda |
Computer-aided creation, handling and management of three-dimensional (3D) shapes is becoming an essential technology. Key processes in product design, engineering and manufacturing, but also in the graphical and entertainment industry, medical healing and urban planning, are heavily dependent on techniques for effective and efficient control of 3D shapes. In particular the requirements on the quality of engineered products are rapidly becoming more severe, putting strict conditions on aesthetic, ergonomic and cost aspects, which are all implicitly or explicitly related to shape. From literature, but also from professional users of the relevant computer-based tools, it is known that the control of 3D shapes suffers from serious limitations.
The project addresses the following issues:
1) translation of engineering requirements into shape constraints, 2) finding appropriate procedures (algorithms) that enable computer-based variation of shape in conformity with the constraints, 3) presenting appropriate shape handles (or parameters) to the user, and 4) providing relevant feedback to the user when he/she changes a parameter.
Addressing these issues is crucial to solve a very general problem: the lack of flexibility of shape handles. Existing methods cannot solve this, because they are too much based on low-level geometric editing.
In the project we will introduce an innovative method, composed of:
1) selection of regions in 3D objects by the user, 2) shape matching and shape fitting, 3) shape recognition, introduction of parameters, and constraint maintenance, 4) techniques for merging freeform shapes into new models, and 5) shape deformation techniques, with or without topological change.
As a result, the project will deliver a methodology and a set of computer tools supporting the required shape modifications.
This is a joint project with the Faculty of Design, Engineering and Production.
This project is supported by the Technology Foundation STW.