Deformation-based freeform feature reconstruction in reverse engineering

For reconstructing a freeform feature from point cloud, a deformation-based method is proposed in this paper. The freeform feature consists of a secondary surface and a blending surface. The secondary surface plays a role in substituting a local region of a given primary surface. The blending surface acts as a bridge to smoothly connect the unchanged region of the primary surface with the secondary surface. The secondary surface is generated by surface deformation subjected to line constraints, i.e., character lines and limiting lines, not designed by conventional methods. The lines are used to represent the underlying information of the freeform feature in point cloud, where the character lines depict the feature＇s shape, and the limiting lines determine its location and orientation. The configuration of the character lines and the extraction of the limiting lines are discussed in detail. The blending surface is designed by the traditional modeling method, whose intrinsic parameters are recovered from point cloud through a series of steps, namely, point cloud slicing, circle fitting and regression analysis. The proposed method is used not only to effectively and efficiently reconstruct the freeform feature, but also to modify it by manipulating the line constraints. Typical examples are given to verify our method.