Development of a System for Designing and Generating the Tool Paths for Manufacturing Aesthetically Pleasing Freeform Objects

An integrated freeform shape design and manufacturing system in which collision-free tool paths can be generated directly from the designed shape has been developed. The system employs a new surface patch representation method which has shape control points and a method of connecting surface patches even if their boundaries are symmetrical along a common boundary. This system runs on an engineering workstation and has a menu-driven human interface. With this system, designers are able to represent aesthetically pleasing shapes in the computer with greater precision than previously and display them on a color graphic terminal using a variety of new display techniques so that the designed shapes can be thoroughly examined. These features together with the system's automatic tool path generation reduce leadtime by 80%, compared with conventional procedures. A camera handle designed and manufactured using this system is shown.