Bounded distance field for assisting interactive layout design of water circuits

抄録

Manufacturing companies often define various guidelines on the part placement in a mechanical product. In this study, we present a software system to assist in the layout of parts when minimum thickness and clearance conditions between the parts are specified in the guidelines. The idea of a “bounded distance field” is proposed, which is a distance field in a limited region around the boundary surface of a solid object. Gaps generated during parts placement that are too narrow can be detected by checking the distance value at the surface polygon of the object in the field. Based on a placement of new objects or a position change of objects, the distance field in the modeling space must be updated. To reduce the update cost, we introduce the idea of a “lazy evaluation” into the distance computation. In this method, a thickness and clearance evaluation is performed by using individual fields associated with the objects, and the computation of the combined distance field of all objects is postponed for as long as possible. To evaluate the practical application of the bounded distance field and the lazy evaluation of the distance value, an interactive system to assist in the layout design of water circuits in a mold cavity is demonstrated.