CONSTRUCTING SURFACE FEATURES THROUGH DEFORMATION

摘要

A frequent problem in computer aided mechanical design is the construction of arbitrarily-shaped ribs and beads on surfaces, to increase their rigidity or for aesthetic reasons. We improve upon a previous mathematical approach for defining such ribs and beads, based on using so-called extension functions to define a deformation matrix, which is then applied to the underlying shape. Our improvements offer important practical advantages: firstly, by use of cosine extension functions, we get a greater control over, and flexibility of, rib shape, including the possibility of repeating ribs; secondly, we can directly control the spine curves. We give experimental results to demonstrate that the method is simple and intuitive, has low computational cost, and is potentially useful for computer aided design, computer graphics and other applications.