Semantic Cage Generation for FE Mesh Editing

In this paper, we present an approach to semantic cage generating and semantic cage based finite element mesh editing to allow users to conduct the required editing on complex finite element mesh effectively and efficiently through cage-based deformation during product design. In the approach, design semantics involved in a finite element mesh are incorporated with its cage to enable the cage based and semantic based editing of the finite element mesh. Firstly, the design semantics including semantic features and semantic relations are extracted from the original mesh, and a simplified mesh with the semantics preserved is constructed. Then, the semantic cage without cage-model intersection is automatically created by offsetting the simplified mesh and mapping the semantics from the original mesh to the cage. Finally, the editing manipulation is directly imposed on the semantic features rather than single vertex or face of the cage to achieve the required modification on the mesh. The experimental results show the effectiveness and potentials of the proposed approach.