A Formal Structure for Nonequivalent Solid Representations

This work is based on the recognition that there will always be a need for different representations of the same entity, albeit a building or building part, a shape or other complex attribute. Different representations support different sets of operations with varying efficiencies. Given our expectation that such multiple representations will always exist, there is a need, formally, to define the relations between alternative representations, in order to support translation and identify where exact translation is or is not possible, and to define the coverage of different representations. A method for the analysis of representations is developed, which is applied to four different solid modeling representations.