Geometric reasoning for extraction of manufacturing features in iso-oriented polyhedrons

This paper investigates the extraction of machining features from boundary descriptions of iso-oriented (having no inclined faces) polyhedrons. We prove that manufacturing the features proposed by our feature extractor results exactly in the desired part-in this respect, the approach is both sound and complete. Our method uses the adjacency information between faces to derive the features. This keeps the determination of isolated features in a part straightforward. However, interaction of features creates difficulties since the adjacency information between some faces is lost. We derive this lost information by considering faces that when extended intersect other faces to form concave edges. The derived face adjacencies are termed virtual links. Augmenting the virtual links to the cavity graph of the object leads to its feature graph, and subgraph matching of primitive graphs in this graph results in feature hypotheses. A feature hypothesis is considered valid if the volume corresponding to it is not shared with the part in question; therefore, we verify the feature hypotheses by checking the regularized intersection of the feature volume and the part. Thus, feature verification employs a constructive solid geometry approach. We have implemented a prototype of the system in the Smalltalk-80 environment