CAD Reconstruction of Free-Form Optimized Shapes with Subdivision Surfaces

Free-form shape optimization has proven to be a very powerful tool in industrial applications. The usage of the nodes of the mesh directly as design variables leads to an enormous freedom of design and shape generation. While the application of free-form shape optimization is emerging in early design stages of industrial components, the resulting shapes are often interpreted and reconstructed in CAD programs for further development stages. However, manual reconstruction is costly and can lead to false interpretations. This contribution will take advantage of the relation between the free-form regularization method called Vertex Morphing and Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces by taking advantage of their relation being the description of bi-cubic B-Spline surfaces. A feature detection algorithm will detect clearly identifiable features that should be preserved in the reconstruction stage. These features will then be described by a suitable set of control points.     «

Free-form shape optimization has proven to be a very powerful tool in industrial applications. The usage of the nodes of the mesh directly as design variables leads to an enormous freedom of design and shape generation. While the application of free-form shape optimization is emerging in early design stages of industrial components, the resulting shapes are often interpreted and reconstructed in CAD programs for further development stages. However, manual reconstruction is costly and can lead to...     »