Beautification

Reverse engineering a physical object is the extraction of information from a particular object which is sufficient to reproduce it. In most cases only an approximation of some aspect of the original part is required. For this research project we are interested in reverse engineering the shape of mechanical parts which can be described by planar, spherical, cylindrical, conical and toroidal surfaces. Our goal is to create a system that can automatically generate a complete and consistent solid model for a given, simple mechanical part which has all the important geometric properties of its real instance.

It is expected that a system like this has various practical applications by dramatically reducing the amount of human interaction required for generating CAD models. Often CAD models of existing parts do not exist or are not available in a usable form or a CAD model of a non-computer generated model like a clay model is required. Applications for those models range from design and re-design to manufacturing to analysis. An important aspect for many of these applications is that an accurate model with the intended shape properties is generated.

  • Reverse Engineering and Beautification of Geometric Models

    To obtain the initial data for a part we use a commercial 3D laser scanner. From the generated point clouds a valid CAD model can be created by using existing technologies. This can be done by segmentation of the point sets into subsets and by finding surfaces that best approximate those subsets. From these surfaces ...

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    Publications

    • C. H. Gao, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Local Topological Beautification of Reverse Engineered Models. Computer-Aided Design, 36(13):1337-1355, 2004.

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    • C. H. Gao, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marhall, R. R. Martin, Y. Li, Z. Yang. Partial Approximate Symmetry Detection of Geometric Model. Materials Science Forum, 471-472:702-706, 2004.

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    • F. C Langbein, C. H. Gao, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Topological and Geometric Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models. In: G. Elber, P. Brunet (eds), Proc. ACM Symp. Solid Modelling and Applications, pp. 255-260, 2004.

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    • F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Choosing Consistent Constraints for Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models, Computer-Aided Design, 36(3):261-278, 2004.

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    • F. C. Langbein. Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models. PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Cardiff University, June 2003.

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    • C. H. Gao, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Approximate Congruence Detection of Model Features for Reverse Engineering. In: M.-S. Kim (ed), Proc. Int. Conf. Shape Modelling and Applications, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 69-77, 2003.

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    • F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Numerical Methods for Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models. In: H. Suzuki, R. R. Martin (eds), Proc. Geometric Modeling and Processing, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 159-168, 2002.

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    • F.C. Langbein, B.I. Mills, A.D. Marshall, R.R. Martin. Approximate Geometric Regularities. Int. J. Shape Modeling, 7(2):129-162, 2001.

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    • F. C. Langbein, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Finding Approximate Shape Regularities for Reverse Engineering. J. Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 1(4): 282-290, 2001.

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    • F. C. Langbein, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Recognizing Geometric Patterns for Beautification of Reconstructed Solid Models. In: Proc. Int. Conf. Shape Modelling and Applications, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 10-19, 2001.

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    • B. I. Mills, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Approximate Symmetry Detection for Reverse Engineering. In: D. C. Anderson, K. Lee (eds), Proc. ACM Symp. Solid Modelling and Applications, pp. 241-248, 2001.

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    • F. C. Langbein, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Finding Approximate Shape Regularities in Reverse Engineered Solid Models Bounded by Simple Surfaces. In: D. C. Anderson, K. Lee (eds), Proc. ACM Symp. Solid Modelling and Applications, pp. 206-216, 2001.

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    • B. I. Mills, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Estimate of Frequencies of Geometric Regularities for Use in Reverse Engineering of Simple Mechanical Components. Technical Report GVG 2001-1, Computational Geometry and Computer Vision Group, Dept. Computer Science, Cardiff University, 2001.

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    Presentations

    • F. C. Langbein. Reverse Engineering: From Artifacts to Concepts. Public engagement and outreach talk given at various occasions.

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    • F. C. Langbein, C. H. Gao, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Topological and Geometric Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models. Poster, ACM Symp. Solid Modelling and Applications, Genova, Italy, 9-11 June, 2004.

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    • C. H. Gao, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Approximate Congruence Detection of Model Features for Reverse Engineering. Int. Conf. Shape Modelling and Applications, 2003.

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    • F. C. Langbein. Strategies for Beautification of Complex Geometric Models. Geometric Modelling Society Meeting, Bath University, 27th November, 2002.

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    • F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Numerical Methods for Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models. Geometric Modeling and Processing, Wako, Japan, 10-12 July, 2002.

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    • F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Towards Choosing Consistent Geometric Constraints. Geometric Modelling Society Meeting, Cardiff University, 27th March, 2002.

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    • F. C. Langbein, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Recognizing Geometric Regularities for Beautification of Reconstructed Solid Models. Invited departmental talk, Department of Maths and Statistics, Murray State University, Kentucky, USA, June 2001.

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    • F. C. Langbein, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Finding Approximate Shape Regularities in Solid Models Bounded by Simple Surfaces. ACM Symp. Solid Modeling and Applications, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 6-8 June, 2001.

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    • B. I. Mills, F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Approximate Symmetry Detection for Reverse Engineering. ACM Symp. Solid Modeling and Applications, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 6-8 June, 2001.

      [Details]

    • F. C. Langbein, B. I. Mills, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin. Recognizing Geometric Patterns for Beautification of Reconstructed Solid Models. Int. Conf. Shape Modelling and Applications, Genova, Italy, 7-11 May, 2001.

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    • F. C. Langbein, A. D. Marshall, R. R. Martin, B. I. Mills. Beautification and Healing. Geometric Modelling Society Meeting, Brunel University, 6th January, 2000.

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    Codes

      Engagement

      • F. C. Langbein. Reverse Engineering: From Artifacts to Concepts. Public engagement and outreach talk given at various occasions.

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      Partners

      • C. H. Gao
        School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, UK.

      • Bruce I Mills
        School of Computer Science, Cardiff University, UK.

      • A Dave Marshall
        School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, UK.

      • Ralph R Martin
        School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.

      • Frank C Langbein
        School of Computer Science, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.

      Funding

      • September 1999 – June 2003: Beautification of Reverse Engineered Geometric Models, EPSRC GR/M78267/01. PI: R. R. Martin, CoI: A. D. Marshall, P. M. Hall. £310,527.

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