B-rep Matching for Collaborating Across CAD Systems

Abstract

Large Computer-Aided Design (CAD) projects usually require collaboration across many different CAD systems as well as applications that interoperate with them for manufacturing, visualization, or simulation. A fundamental barrier to such collaborations is the ability to refer to parts of the geometry (such as a specific face) robustly under geometric and/or topological changes to the model. Persistent referencing schemes are a fundamental aspect of most CAD tools, but models that are shared across systems cannot generally make use of these internal referencing mechanisms, creating a challenge for collaboration. In this work, we address this issue by developing a novel learning-based algorithm that can automatically find correspondences between two CAD models using the standard representation used for sharing models across CAD systems: the Boundary-Representation (B-rep). Because our method works directly on B-reps it can be generalized across different CAD applications enabling collaboration.