A haptic-based part decomposition method for multi-material product design

Abstract

Multi-material products are getting increasingly popular in recent years. Yet no systems have been developed to support the design of such products. In this article, a haptic-based method for designing multi-material products is proposed. The proposed method consists of three main parts: haptic painting/marking, boundary smoothing/fitting, and volume decomposition. A prototype system based on the three parts has been implemented using a haptic input device. The haptic device provides an intuitive user interface for quick volume mark-up in a multi-material product by direct mesh painting. Each painted region represents a material volume whose boundary can be automatically traced. The boundary points are then used as control points for Catmull-Rom spline fitting. To constrain a spline to the original mesh surface, the spline is projected onto the mesh. Now, using the boundary splines, volume decomposition can be done automatically when needed. Each decomposed volume can be assigned a different material or colour. The numerous iterations of volume mark-up and decomposition in the early stage of multi-material product design can now be made easy and effective using the proposed method. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.