MATEC Web of Conferences – General and efficient algorithms for handling intricate situations in trimmed surface rendering

Abstract

Trimmed surfaces have been widely used in complicated product design in mechanical engineering especially in complex free form surface models of CAD/CAM/CAE. Focusing on the deficiencies of the algorithms available in published literatures when handling some intricate situations, this paper proposes a more general and efficient algorithm of trimmed surface rendering (ATSR). The ATSR is a general algorithm that can deal with most intricate situations, which frequently occur in practical engineering that no special attention has been paid to in references at hand, as well as common situations. Furthermore, this paper presents a new algorithm for the nodes of polygon connecting into elements (ANCE). The ANCE can handle most tricky polygons appearing in the process of rendering and achieve successful triangulation for the to-be-rendered surface. Preferable results are obtained in the case studies, which indicate that the algorithms (ATSR and ANCE) are efficient and effective in handling complicated as well as common trimmed surface models in real engineering industry.