Feature-based surface design and machining

A feature-based method for designing and representing functional surfaces such as automobile inner panels that lets a user assemble and present complicated, multifeatured surfaces using known, generally simpler component surfaces and information about feature shape is reviewed. It is shown that, using this method, CAD users can generate numerically controlled (NC) tool paths and use them to automatically machine 3-D surface geometries with various cutting tools such as ball-nose or spherical-end cutters and toroidal or flat-end cutters. The method was tested on models involving simple explicit primary and secondary surfaces as well as more complicated B-spline parametric surfaces. Results indicate that the tool-center-generation algorithm is accurate, robust, and computationally efficient.<>