The authors are investigating reverse engineering for reconstructing the shape of simple mechanical parts. Currently, preliminary B-rep models can be created by fitting surfaces to point clouds obtained by scanning an actual part using a 3D laser scanner. The resulting model, although valid, is often not suitable for purposes such as redesign. This is because expected regularities and constraints are not present in the model. This report describes a number of aspects of the geometry of mechanical parts which should be exploited to adjust a B-rep model to improve its usefulness. Aspects considered are geometric constraints between surface parameters, regularly repeated substructures, symmetry, and the presence of features such as slots and holes. The results of a survey of a range of mechanical parts are presented and discussed, showing which of these aspects occur with a frequency that justifies their use in beautification algorithms intended to turn preliminary reverse engineered B-rep models into models engineers expect.

This thesis presents methods for the automatic creation of boundary-representation models of polyhedral objects from single line drawings depicting the objects. This topic is important in that automated interpretation of freehand sketches would remove a bottleneck in current engineering design methods. The thesis does not consider conversion of freehand sketches to line drawings or methods which require manual intervention or multiple drawings. Thge thesis contains a number of...

Boundary representation models reconstructed from 3D range data suffer from various inaccuracies caused by noise in the data and the model building software. Such models can be improved in a beautification step, which finds geometric regularities approximately present in the model and imposes a consistent subset of them on the model. Methods to select regularities consistently such that they are likely to represent the original, ideal design intent are presented. Efficiency during selection is achieved by considering degrees of freedom to analyse the solvability of constraint systems representing the regularities (without actually solving them). Priorities are used to select regularities in case of inconsistencies. The selected set of constraints is solved numerically and an improved model is rebuild from the solution. Experiments show that the presented methods can beautify models by selecting consistent regularities and enforcing major intended regularities.

Automatic creation of B-rep models of engineering objects from freehand sketches would benefit designers. A subgoal is to take a single line drawing (with hidden lines removed), and from it deduce an initial 3D geometric realisation of the visible part of the object. Junction and line labels, and provisional depth coordinates, are important components of this frontal geometry.

A tool which can quickly interpret line drawings (with hidden lines removed) of engineering objects as boundary representation CAD models would be of significant benefit in the process of engineering design. Inflation of the drawing to produce a frontal geometry, a geometric realisation of that part of the object visible in the drawing, is an important stage of this process. Previous