Maximal Volume Decomposition and its Application to Feature Recognition

Abstract

Abstract A method has been developed that decomposes an object having both planar and curved faces into volumes, called maximal volumes, using the halfspaces of the object. A maximal volume has as few concave edges as possible without introducing additional halfspaces. The object is first decomposed into minimal cells by extending the faces of the object. These minimal cells are then composed to form maximal volumes. The combinations of such minimal cells that result in maximal volumes are searched efficiently by examining the relationships among those minimal cells. With this decomposition method, a delta volume, which is the volume difference between the raw material and the finished part, is decomposed into maximal volumes. By subtracting maximal volumes from each other in different orders and applying graph matching to the resulting volumes, multiple interpretations of features can be generated.