The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 23, 1996
Filed:
Aug. 13, 1993
James H Oliver, Ames, IA (US);
Iowa State University Research Foundation, Inc., Ames, IA (US);
Abstract
A technique is presented for the synthesis of sculptured surface models subject to several functional design constraints. A design environment is specified as a collection of polyhedral models which represent components in the vicinity of the design surface, or regions which the surface should avoid. The primary functional constraint is formulated as a proximity penalty function such that the design surface is induced to avoid a tolerance envelope around each component. In addition, a constraint based on surface area is formulated to counteract the expansion effect of the proximity constraint. Secondary design constraints are formulated to maintain consistent surface topology, and exploit part symmetry. Surface synthesis is thus formulated as an optimization problem and solved via simulated annealing. Several example applications are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the technique.