Constrained free form deformation as a tool for rapid manufacturing

In this study an application of free form deformation for the editing of clouds of points or tessellated surfaces representing industrial parts is presented. The application is based on an efficient implementation of NURBS based free form deformation and the implementation of functions for imposing constraints to position, directions and curvatures of embedded objects. The developed functions permit the direct manipulation of triangulated surfaces eliminating the surface reconstruction stage, reducing the time requested in the reverse engineering process and, at the end, reducing the time to market. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.