NURBS BASED CNC MACHINE PROCESS USING BOOLEAN SUBSTRACTION

摘要

A method and apparatus is directed to an integration of a computer modeling process in which a Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine (120) is used for manufacture or rapid prototyping. Intermediate stages include Computer Aided Design (CAD) stage (112), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) stage (114), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) stage (116) and Computer Numerical Controlled (CNC) machine stage (120). By using Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS), a CAD data file is converted for direct input to the CNC machine that is able to read NURBS instruction codes. In particular, the method and apparatus is a shift to NURBS which describes geometrically the difference between the material blank from which the product (or prototype) is made and the product itself using boolean substraction.