To the Development of Open Source Software for the Reconstruction of CAD Models

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an open source software package aimed at solving reverse engineering problems for CAD models defined in polygonal form. We briefly discuss the main principles behind the new software, its architecture, and directions for its further development. The use of the software is illustrated by examples of a turbine blade. In the first example, the turbine blade is reconstructed automatically from a structured point cloud. Another example is the interactive reconstruction of the turbine blade from an unstructured surface triangulation. In both the cases, we use a surface skinning strategy enhanced by a curve fairing operator. We show that the modified skinning operator does not minimize the total bending energy of the surface, but yields a smooth patch where input inaccuracies are compensated for. The reconstruction result is a parametric model of the turbine blade where the design variables are the coordinates of the poles for each profile curve. The proposed software architecture can be used for partial or complete parameterization of reconstructed CAD models with the aim of their subsequent optimization.