Industrial design using interpolatory discrete developable surfaces

Published in Computer-Aided Design, 2011

Abstract: Design using free-form developable surfaces plays an important role in the manufacturing industry. Currently most commercial systems can only support converting free-form surfaces into approximate developable surfaces. Direct design using developable surfaces by interpolating descriptive curves is much desired in industry. In this paper, by enforcing a propagation scheme and observing its nesting and recursive nature, a dynamic programming method is proposed for the design task of interpolating 3D boundary curves with a discrete developable surface. By using dynamic programming, the interpolatory discrete developable surface is obtained by globally optimizing an objective that minimizes tangent plane variations over a boundary triangulation. The proposed method is simple and effective when used in industry. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate its practicality and efficiency in industrial design.

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Recommended citation: Yong-Jin Liu, Kai Tang, Wen-Yong Gong, Tie-Ru Wu (2011) Industrial design using interpolatory discrete developable surfaces. Computer-Aided Design, Vol. 43, No. 9, pp. 1089-1098, 2011.